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DigiGods Episode 265: Filmtoberfest
215 Plays11 days ago
An Asian cinema bonanza! Also, fabulous 4ks like Gregg Araki’s Teen Apocalypse Trilogy and Repo Man from Criterion, Richard Pryor Live on the Sunset Strip, Body Double and Despicable Me 4! All that and more on the DigiGods! #4k #UHD #DVD #Bluray #4k #TV #Movies #madeonzencastr
In this podcast episode, the Gods discuss:
- Adela Has Not Had Supper Yet (Blu-ray)
- The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet: Video Scrapbook (DVD)
- The Alaskans - The Complete Series (Blu-ray)
- All of Us Strangers (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Anselm (Blu-ray)
- Are You Lonesome Tonight? (DVD)
- A Balance (DVD)
- The Battle of Chile (Blu-ray)
- Before, Now and Then (DVD)
- Black Belt Jones (Blu-ray)
- Black God, White Devil (Blu-ray)
- The Blue Jean Monster (DVD)
- Body Double (Choice Collection) (Blu-ray)
- Body Double 4k UHD Steelbook (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Bodyguard Kiba 1 & 2 (Blu-ray)
- Born to Fly (Blu-ray)
- Brokenwood Mysteries: Season 10 (Blu-ray)
- Can't Hardly Wait (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Captain Phillips 4k UHD Steelbook (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Casino Raiders (Blu-ray)
- The Champions (Blu-ray)
- Chicago P.D.: Season Eleven (DVD)
- The Childe (Blu-ray)
- China O'Brien - Limited Edition (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Chronicles of Riddick [Limited Edition] (4k UHD Blu-ray
- CSI: Vegas - The Final Season (DVD)
- Despicable Me 4 (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Dr. Cheon and the Lost Talisman (Blu-ray)
- DVD Double Feature: Blood Diamond / Body of Lies (DVD)
- Ennio (DVD)
- The Fall Of Ako Castle (Blu-ray)
- Farewell My Concubine (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Fiddler’s Journey to the Big Screen (Blu-ray)
- Fire Country: Season 2 (DVD)
- Focus (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Game Night (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- The Ghost Station (Blu-ray)
- Gregg Araki's Teen Apocalypse Trilogy (The Doom Generation, Nowhere, Totally F***ed Up) (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Halo Season 2 (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Happiness (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Heroes and Villains : Three Films starring Jet Li (The Enforcer, Dr Wai in “The Scripture with No Words”, Hitman) (Blu-ray)
- High Crime (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Icons Unearthed: Fast & Furious (Blu-ray)
- In the Moscow Slums (Blu-ray)
- The Inspector Wears Skirts (Blu-ray)
- July Rhapsody (DVD)
- Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part Three (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Knuckles (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Law & Order: Special Victims Unit - Season 25 (Blu-ray)
- Le Samouraï (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- The Long Arm Of The Law 1&2 (Blu-ray)
- The Long Good Friday (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- The Madame Blanc Mysteries: Series 3 (DVD)
- A Man on His Knees (Blu-ray)
- MAXXXINE (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Meeting The Beatles in India (Blu-ray)
- The Million Eyes of Sumuru (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- NCIS: Hawai'i The Final Season (DVD)
- Northwest Passage (Blu-ray)
- One-Percent Warrior (Blu-ray)
- Passion (Blu-ray)
- Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (4k UHD Blu-ray)
AND MORE!
Recommended
Transcript
00:00:26
Speaker
And we're back, and it has been a while. We've had a hard time coordinating schedules. ah Anybody who who pays attention to my substack at Hollywood Heretic and HollywoodHeretic.substack.com got a new episode back where Tim and Mark and I just talk about a lot of things Hollywood, none just ah not just DVDs and Blu-rays and whatnot. So go on over there to HollywoodHeretic.substack dot.com and listen to our latest Mark's always fun. ah Tim, everybody died. Everybody died. That was a good chat. That was a good chat. Yeah, but is we if we go away for too long, and the whole bit's become the shuffle. My gosh, it's insane. So let's let's just let's just start off. First off, let me just say that not a movie person, but I am very very sad. And you and everyone else will probably go, who? um But I am very sad that this week we lost Johan Naskins.
00:01:22
Speaker
And Johan Neyskens, one of the great Dutch soccer players of all time, part of the 1974 World Cup losing team, but the the the team that was captained by the great Johan Kreuf and Johan Neyskens scored the only Dutch goal in the final, a penalty kick against Germany, and then they wound up losing 2-1. But that made me sad, probably doesn't make anybody else listening to this sad. ah First off, since we did this, Phil Donahue. Yeah.
00:01:49
Speaker
like which is you know not and not Not necessarily a movie person. Phil was on TV a lot, obviously a host of all of the Phil Donahue show and other news shows that he did, but Phil would pop up ah if you're if you're old enough. ah you would you You will have seen Phil in episodes of L.A. Law and Blossom, he and who's the boss. And all these he's all and he always was playing you know Phil Donahue or somebody just like Phil Donahue.
00:02:15
Speaker
with but old no microphone married to martin married to marlow thomas which makes him danny thomas' son-inlaw yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah just you know and and and here's the thing you know i thought about I'm like, you know what, without Phil Donahue, and this is a weird way of putting it, yeah but without Phil Donahue, there is no Oprah and there is no Jerry Springer. And there is no, there's no Geraldo.
00:02:39
Speaker
Indeed, Phil was a precursor to all of them. Oprah oprah said said it all the time, ah that that that she did he really cut a path for her very specifically. And the and you know we we can push that on up as far as you want to go. phil phil's it was in um A couple of years ago, there was a documentary called Finding Vivian Mayer. We were in a documentary documentary, a guy who found all of these ah black and white photograph ah photographs taken by this woman named Vivian Mayer, a very strange woman, a very strange film. By hating street photographer street street photographer yeah but happenstance, Phil was one of the yeah yeah couples, one of the one of the the families that Vivian Mayer was the nanny for. So Phil was in that movie.
00:03:24
Speaker
um wow you're being interviewed by John the Louvre about this woman named Vivian Mayer. It was just the weirdest thing, because he's he's in this movie. It's just this documentary. you know has nothing He's not hosting it or anything like that. But nevertheless, he he's answering these questions like Phil Donahue. He's like, well, let me tell you. And he's and he's just he's just Alexa cancel. That's Alexa telling me about the show. He's just Phil Donahue no matter what. And um and he already had that white hair.
00:03:51
Speaker
and and And you're going to remember this, too. Because there was I remember after the that daytime TV, was it was sort it was sort of went in four stages, right, when I was a kid. It was the local reruns of great sitcoms. So in the mornings, I would have my cereal and my milk, and being the loser that I was, I'd sit there and basically watch TV all morning, and watch, you know, the Andy Griffith Show, and I Love Lucy, and Green Acres, and The Mothers-in-Law, and Gilligan's Island. It was all that crap during the day.
00:04:17
Speaker
And then there were some game shows and there was Richard richard Dawson, you know, kissing women and and committing sexual assault in the middle of a game show in the middle of the day. and Family feud. and And then suddenly there's a bunch of soap operas, which and i was didn't what Ryan's hope came on suddenly, and I was always too lazy to get up and turn the knob because I didn't have remote control, so whatever. And then, kind of right after that, mid-afternoon before the news came on, there were all these talk shows, and they were all the same. It was Mike Douglas, and it was Merv Griffin, and it was ah John Davidson, and it was Dinah Shore.
00:04:52
Speaker
And they all did the same thing. They all basically sat on stools and they brought on one guest after another and eventually it was just the host with like four or five other people sitting on stools and talking to the audience. And and then suddenly ah Phil Donahue came on.
00:05:10
Speaker
And he didn't have celebrities on. He had you know ah writers and politicians and philosophers and academics and people of the day. And he had an audience. And the audience would ask questions. He'd walk around the audience with that microphone. That was so new.
00:05:25
Speaker
And next thing I knew, Dinah and John Davidson and and Mike Douglas and Merv were gone. And there was Phil and Oprah and Mari. And eventually Jerry Springer took the whole thing into the toilet after Geraldo kind of went in that direction. But it was fascinating. He literally changed talk shows, given it from the one to the other. It was amazing.
00:05:47
Speaker
It was amazing. yeah yeah Those guys, so yeah and i they look, I love Mike and Murphy. They come out, they do a song. Yeah, that's right. That's right. John Davidson always did a song. Like it was like it was the 1940s, which of course they were creatures of. yeah That's right. That's right. that's what they had all And and and and they it was a really, really, but Phil, um yeah, um um it suddenly sort of became all sort of egalitarian.
00:06:10
Speaker
Uh, with Phil, uh, and then yeah and and Phil, Phil would do some interesting things too that were a little sensational at the time. But, but when we think back about the things that we thought were sensational on Phil show and compare them to the things that would come to be on, you know, Jerry Springer show and some of the other shows like that, those weren't particularly sensational things on Phil show at all.
00:06:29
Speaker
and They were topical is what they were. you know Some of the earliest sort of adult serious conversations had um about oh yeah ah gay rights or something like that. We had on the Phil Donahue show, where it wasn't sort of fallacious, just just just people talking about about their lives and in and women and all kinds of things. So anyway, yeah, Phil, great guy.
00:06:50
Speaker
Great guy. Miss him a lot. we we lost We lost James Earl Jones as well, one of the great voices in the movies. I think I heard some people saying if you were to narrow down the most memorable and great voices in movie history, you would be left with two. You would have James Earl Jones and Orson Welles. And that's it. And everybody else is next tier.
00:07:11
Speaker
yeah and yeah um thing man i mean you know not just darth vader but every everything that he ever did i yeah the one that i keep pointing to is ah cry the beloved country you know which which is it which was a novel that was written pre-apartheid but then it was they made a movie of it pre-apartheid and then they made another movie right after apartheid ended with James Earl Jones and Richard Harris which was just extraordinary to watch those two men on screen and if you haven't seen cry the beloved country with James Earl Jones and Richard Harris you are missing out you've got to go seek it out it's just yeah
00:07:49
Speaker
amazing Because that voice, sure, absolutely, that voice is great, but James L. Jones was was a great in-person ah actor on the screen. yeah ah Yeah. His Jack Johnson is fantastic. Oh, my gosh. I mean, that's that's my first, little like, imprinted sort of memory of James L. Jones, but he's also fun and could be so funny. Bing along. Yeah. ah You know, I mean, that that's just ah yeah yeah and it so you just ah just ah just an all-around good guy. You know, he only made $9,000.
00:08:22
Speaker
for the one-hour session that he did to do all that Darth Vader. Amazing. grand. Now, you would think that we would have been upset by it. He eventually made a whole lot more money because of that. But in terms of of just for that ah principal movie that he did, $9,000. This is James. James is like, oh, man, did you cheat it? James says, no, I wasn't cheated at all. That was great. That $9,000 made me millions of dollars. Yeah, over the next 30 years. Yeah, that was the film. That was the moment that his voice became a new tool for him to work with. Yeah, for the for the for the rest of his career. So the getting paid for that show was not his concern. James Earl Jones was the voice of all kinds of luxury automobiles all from the eighty s he was in He kind of pioneered that for a lot of celebrities. you know You didn't hear recognizable voices. like we We make fun of how often we hear Patrick Stewart's voice on commercials today. right i mean he's sort of He sort of does that now. But James Earl Jones was one of the first to do that, to really start narrating commercials. and The point was for you to know that that was James Earl Jones. That's right.
00:09:41
Speaker
or whoever the important person was. This is CNN. I mean, come on. He was the voice of CNN for years and years and years. And it just said, we mean business. You better watch us because we mean business. All right, I'm going to sit down. Gravitas. Yeah, Daniel Johnson.
00:09:57
Speaker
and And we lost Tito Jackson. Tito. So yeah we're down to three now. Yeah, yeah, the other Jackson. down to We're down to were down to three three Jacksons and one BG. And out that out of that principal Jackson 5 group.
00:10:13
Speaker
You know, we're not counting Randy and, in rey and, yeah oman littleya yeah and, latoy's not gotten all that yeah the principle that that's where we are um ah and,
00:10:30
Speaker
all those sort of memorable guitar riffs and, songs like abc yeah and, ah rock and robin and all these kind of stuff those particularly those those really like
00:10:42
Speaker
you know, Jackson was an excellent guitar player, you know, and and when you're in a band with all these other kids and they're singing and dancing and doing all the stuff and, you know, and you got Jeremy and standing at one end playing the bass and Tito standing at the other end, ah the cousin playing the guitar, sometimes that stuff gets lost. yeah But there's a musicality in those songs that that's provided by those guys standing on the end. So, you know, I just want to, you know, I'm a guitar player, so I just want to give a word up to Tito. Excellent, excellent guitar player, brother. I could hear you. Yeah, likewise. And ah Maggie Smith, the amazing Maggie Smith. And ah here's the thing, Maggie Smith didn't just act in, she was a movie star, a legitimate movie star, name above the title, Academy Award nominee or winner or Emmy Award winner or nominee in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, aughts,
00:11:39
Speaker
teens and twenties. That's seven decades as a movie star. I don't think there is anyone else in that league. I don't. Oh, I can't. I can't. I can't. I can name a lot that would that are six decades. You know, Meryl Streep is is is kind of verging on that. But but seven decades. that's That is unprecedented. That is unprecedented. What an amazing lady. Two Academy Awards.
00:12:07
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And and frankly, yeah Miracle Club, the Miracle Club last, I guess 2023 was the Miracle Club. Lovely little, you know, some of those little British. And she was wonderful in it. Harry Potter harry potter and and Downton Abbey. I mean, she's been just ah implacable for years and everyone loves her because she's the one that comes. I mean, look on Downton Abbey.
00:12:28
Speaker
Everyone I know who watched Downton Abbey, she was their favorite character because she always had the lines, right? She spoke the truth. She said what everybody was thinking and everybody loved that old broad. She was great. Always the best lines, always the best look. What is a weekend? You don't even need the context. I was just fantastic. Maggie Smith. ah Chris Christofferson, man. ah You know, there's a guy, music and movies, ah somehow, you know, at a time when it was really tough for people in the music business to make it in the movies. Chris Christofferson became a a star in both. And not just like, um he didn't just become a musical guy. I mean, he was a legitimate actor in movies, like right up into things like ah ah like Heaven's Gate. You know, he is unbelievably good in Heaven's Gate.
00:13:16
Speaker
Yeah, um Chris, look, yeah yeah a few things about Chris that we don't always think about, because Chris was, you had that rough voice, and he was kind of a sex symbol, and he was kind of a good old boy, and and and all of that, all true, all true. Chris Christofferson, Rhodes Scholar. Yeah. Chris Christofferson, Army Ranger. Yeah.
00:13:39
Speaker
You know, ah you range your school, baby, yeah ah yeah yeah did cut cut through it like butter, too, you know. yeah And in so yeah if these guys like him, people like him always amaze me. Not only did he do all of that and all and any any of that would have been just, you know, the father for a life.
00:13:58
Speaker
road scholar and and what you and you make that make a life out of that. Going to Army Range to make a life out of that. yeah And then he said, you know what? I think I'm going to write a song. It's amazing. And make a life out of that. You know what? I think I'm going to act in a couple of movies over there. Amazing.
00:14:13
Speaker
A star is born quite literally. um and And did it also effortlessly. um And without any kind of, you know, I mean, look God bless Johnny and all the old boys come through and had the hard row and you you had to deal with the bottom in the demons and all of that. Chris Christofferson didn't have any demons. No. yeah At all. ah He was just always being Chris Christofferson and everybody was always loving him. Yeah. ah So, you know, yeah. Gotta love Chris Christofferson.
00:14:41
Speaker
Something special, really something special. we They just don't make them like that anymore. And then and then the last, I i i know of everybody else is kind of thinking of other things, but I'm going to say the last member of the Mary Tyler Moore Show has left us. John Amos, john amos last living member of the Mary Tyler Moore Show. Of course, most people remember him from good times, but you know John Amos who did not Talk about what John Amos was other than an actor. Because talk about with Chris Christopherson. We don't know how deep these people go as other things. John Amos famous as an actor, but not how it started. Where where did John start? He was and but he was a writer.
00:15:21
Speaker
Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I forgot about that completely. Yes, you're absolutely right. Start as a writer. John and you're in your right of the Mary Tyler Moore show, which was one of John's a little bit of controversy with respect to good times. John and Norman bumped heads on that. Yeah. Years ago. it took care of all of that and straighten it all out, particularly back when they did that live version of Good Times a few, I don't know, a couple years ago with Jamie Foxx playing the James part of the role.
00:15:58
Speaker
ah john ammos and i and i had I had the opportunity to interview him a bunch of times. He was, of course, in the um ah in those Eddie Murphy movies, Coming to America, including the the recent Coming to America. and so that was So I had a chance to talk to him a bunch of times. John Amos loved talking about the Mary Tyler Moore show. yeah ah that would That was a role that he truly loved. He loved it for this reason.
00:16:19
Speaker
When he got cast on the Mary Tyler Moore show, um ah and he you know he went in the wreath of the part, they weren't casting black, they weren't casting white, they weren't they were casting. yeah And he sat in that room with a whole bunch of actors. John Amos told me this story. And he wondered what the hell was going on because he's like these three white dudes. and yeah and you want you show but why why you were yeah we are and but but But that's what they were doing. They were casting the right guy for the part. And John Amos was the right guy for the part. And when he got that part, they did nothing to that part. They did not change a single line of dialogue to suggest now that this character is, quote unquote, African-American, yeah urban, or black.
00:17:01
Speaker
It was the part, and John Amos did the part. John Amos particularly loved playing the sort of sexual tension thing between him and Sue Ellen, Betty White, yeah on that show. If you watch that show, you'll catch it it. It was really, really fun. And he loved it. He loved it. They wrote it. ah And again, this is in the early 70s that we're talking about. He got John Amos playing this stuff on this sitcom, being really funny.
00:17:28
Speaker
And and yet yet not playing any stereotypes at all in that sitcom, which of course was one of the problems that he had with Good Times a few years before. um and and And so John Amos, if you would ask him what he loved, Kunta Kinte, I found you all of that. yes sure Yeah, sure.
00:17:46
Speaker
I was great. in But John Amos loved being on the Meer Talamore show. And you know, he he had but kind of ah kind of ah a pro-am football career for a while, too. And he was not know that he was never in the NFL. He was in some of the teams that were, you know, eventually wound up in the NFL, AFL and COFL and all those kind of, you know, being C-League football teams. and And it was funny because at one point, allegedly,
00:18:09
Speaker
um One of his coaches, and I think it was when when he was playing for Kansas City Chiefs, said his head to him, you're not really a football player, you're more like a guy who's just trying to play football. And because he he kept he kept me he kept getting injured, and he was just prone to injury, and and you know at a certain point he just said, well, then if I, why don't I just take those skills in tournaments, take them to movies. so i it Quit acting like you're playing football, and just act. it's more be more funny stuff but anyway so loving and John Amos he came into millions of homes and and really nailed it you know and ah Ken page you are the one who broke ken pages passing to me um Ken page
00:18:53
Speaker
Most famous for most people as the voice of the Oogie Boogie man in Nightmare Before Christmas ah did lots of other stuff. I mean a legend on the stage, but ah ah I was privileged to see him twice when they did the Nightmare Before Christmas live performances and didn't want at the Hollywood Bowl and one downtown at I forget what they even named the stadium now. It's you know one of them one of the downtown stadiums. But that first one had all the originals, right? It had Pee Wee Herman before he passed, and it it had you know everyone from the original cast and nobody standing in. And it was amazing. And when he comes on,
00:19:34
Speaker
And he nails the Oogie Boogie song and he just he just owns the stage. And he's a big guy, Ken Page, but it is the highlight of every single one of those concerts. It's the one thing that people just walk away floored by. He had a presence that resonated.
00:19:51
Speaker
for a mile around him. It was unbelievable. You want to talk about stage presence? Ken Page was the guy. And ah yeah, im yes it's just amazing. Well, that's that's a big loss. That that that voice and what that physical as it happens, Ken is it is a St. Louis guy. I'm from St. Louis can happen to be a St. Louis guy.
00:20:09
Speaker
so So, you know, we have this sort of connection that goes back to that. Of course, ah what All Dogs Go to Heaven, Little Mermaid, Little Shop of Horrors, so much, so much Ken Page recorded on the soundtracks of all those wonderful animated films and and so much, so many stage productions. So you can find Ken Page there. He's just so wonderful. Absolutely wonderful.
00:20:30
Speaker
and uh... then getting down to the and here robert rosen probably not a name on everybody's lips but if you've ever been associated with the u c l a film and television archives or the film school as both him and i have uh... robert rosen is basically the founder of the u c l a film and television archives he was dean of the film school at one point And he was our colleague in the LA Film Critics Association. And ah he recently passed as well one of the great film archivists of all time. ah Literally hundreds of movies and and hundreds of hours of classic television would not be available.
00:21:08
Speaker
But for Robert Rosen, getting behind it and making sure that he he helped preserve our film and television heritage. And really, it's such an amazing legacy. So we wanted to pay tribute to to Robert Rosen as well.
00:21:22
Speaker
and lastly to the great French writer-director-actor-comedian Michel Blanc. um You've probably seen him in a few movies, but if you know French cinema, you've seen him in a lot of movies. He was Monsieur Yir in that great thriller by Patrice Lacant, for which I did the audio commentary for the recent Cohen Blu-ray release. And um he also wrote, directed,
00:21:48
Speaker
and starred in a film in 1993 that I saw at the Cannes Film Festival and wound up winning the best ah screenplay award called Dead Tired, or Gross Fatigue in French, which was supposed to be remade in in English with Woody Allen, never was, but it's one of the funniest films I have ever seen. If you ah if you know the French cameos in it, you will probably find it a whole lot funnier, but but the premise is extraordinary. He plays himself,
00:22:16
Speaker
Michel Blanc. And everybody's playing themselves. He's tired of being recognized and not having his life. And until Philippe Noire kind of pulls him aside one day and says, we'll just get a double. He goes, what do you mean? He goes, oh, the guy who's been playing me in movies and been walking around, that's not me. That's my double. we ah A lot of us have them.
00:22:38
Speaker
and and Oh, yeah. and And this is the premise, which is that half the French film industry is sort of on vacation. And they have these lookalike doubles that are out being them taking all the hits in public. It is hy hysterical. It is a wild, crazy, completely over the top satire of the French movie industry. And I would have loved for them to do something similar to Hollywood. It would have been great.
00:23:00
Speaker
but they just never never never got around to it, I guess. 20 years the on, I don't know if you can pull it off. I know. I know. I don't know if you can pull it off 30 years on. But yeah, that's ah that's a great movie to everybody. It's so much fun. Everybody in the movie is is is playing some themselves, but not. Yeah, it's fun. Yeah, so it's really fun. It's out on dv it's now out on DVD here. It has not been out on Blu-ray, but I grabbed myself a Blu-ray last time I was in Paris. You can get the import here. I recommend you do it. Get the Gomis import. it's It's absolutely terrific.
00:23:29
Speaker
So otherwise, let's ah I'll refer everybody over to HollywoodHeritage.substack.com for the latest episode over there. Mark and Tim and I, we we we have a good ah good hour plus chat about all kinds of Hollywood stuff and business stuff. and Interesting question.
00:23:48
Speaker
and and and and yeah um and And we have a really good talk about that, these numbers that come back, and these projections, and what it means, and it's good actually what it doesn't mean, and and in and how it's ultimately discussed. I think people should think about these things. You and I are old enough to remember when it was when when the weekly box office report was not a thing. That's right. um when when it Or I should say when it became a thing. yeah so sope So before that, the movies, you talk about movies, even even as even as it's as late as Siskel and Ebert in the late 70s, early 80s, Siskel and Ebert never talked about box office.
00:24:26
Speaker
Ever. Ever. They talked about the movies. And then suddenly a mention of the box office became necessary. And then suddenly the box office became the principal ah concern. yeah of of And and it's and in box office numbers became this thing that was that is reported to the film going public. And the film going going public starts to make decisions about what movie they're going to go see based on the box office rather than based on review or at least ah word of mouth of a movie. yeah And and and in and you in a big sort of way, we talk about that over there on the podcast of Hollywood here. So let's get into some movies. I want i want to get through the the criterion and the radiance stuff first, which is all super great. But there's also a couple from Deaf Crocodile, which is kind of a boutique company that makes a lot of really interesting stuff. A couple of new things from Deaf Crocodile.
00:25:19
Speaker
that are really, really worth checking out. One is an older film, one's a newer film, both foreign, um from the from Russia, just last year, is in the Moscow slums, which is from director Karen Shakhnazarov. Boy, I can't believe I got that out in one in one try.
00:25:36
Speaker
um a a A filmmaker I'm not at at all familiar with. I'm going to assume that Karen, K-A-R-E-N, me is is a male name in Russia, typically is. and um but this is But this is a really fascinating period ah mystery.
00:25:52
Speaker
that is Oh, that one. that's set At the turn of the last century, for that one. yeah it's It's loosely based on the Sherlock Holmes story, The Sign of the Four, only it it ah it kind of melds in some Russian literature and it takes place in 1902 and it takes a couple of historical figures in place of Sherlock Holmes and and Watson.
00:26:14
Speaker
It's really quite fascinating and um you know it's sort of ah it sort of folds in the Russian version of Jack the Ripper and ah it's it's really a quite intriguing film and I'm sorry that movies like this don't get theatrical releases here because I think this is something that would have had a, you know, if a Miramax or somebody back in the day would have released that, it would have been that would have been a really cool, super cool movie.
00:26:37
Speaker
And then we also have Adela has not had supper yet from 1978, ah which is but kind of a really interesting, it's not a Czech new wave film per se, but it sort of comes from that moment. And it's ah it' it's it's It's sort of fascinating because it's not a normal European film of the period. It's ah it's it's a detective film as well. And it's about a and ah you know ah an American detective, not played by an American in this case, played by somebody whose name I will not at all try to pronounce, who has to go to Prague to look for a missing dog and winds up instead in kind of a little shop of horrors scenario fighting a man-eating plant.
00:27:25
Speaker
And ah it's sort of a satire. it's sort of um It's sort of a little bit of a spy spoof. It's it's very unusual. And it it draws on a lot of different genres. And it's definitely totally unusual and like nothing else you will ever see. So Adela has not had supper yet. And you can guess who Adela is.
00:27:50
Speaker
I mean, it's kind of like Little Shop of Horrors meets, um I don't know, Pink Panther or something. It's really it's it's really quite a movie. um And then real quickly, the ah the Radiance titles that we've got here before we get into the criterion, some good stuff that you're familiar with, some stuff that you're probably not so familiar with.
00:28:08
Speaker
Sage and Suzuki, the great Japanese director, ah kind of most famous, I think, for how Quentin Tarantino paid homage to him in Kill Bill. Sage and Suzuki in the 60s made all kinds of just funky, cool, ah hipster Japanese films. Not really Japsploitation genre, but they they definitely informed it. This is Tattooed Life from 1965. It's a Yakuza story.
00:28:33
Speaker
you know, revenge, and you you killed my brother and all that kind of stuff. And it's ah it it veers over into China. It's got a great commentary on it by William Carroll, who is a Suzuki biographer. A lot of great archival interviews with the filmmakers, and and it's it's a beautifully, beautifully done. But it's a sage and Suzuki film, man. you just got it Suzuki is just the best. He's the coolest.
00:28:58
Speaker
Damiano Damiani directed a film called A Man on His Knees in 1979, very much an Italian 70s film. I'm not a huge fan of the Italian movies from the 70s per se. They have a certain look, a certain grunge to them. That's not exactly my thing, but Damiano Damiani is a filmmaker who has a following. And, um you know, this is this is his one of his ah his gritty you know crime working-class films and uh it's another hit man movie like all these movies are like yeah yeah and that's what he did that's what he did that was his thing so for those who who are into it go for it
00:29:42
Speaker
ah We also have 18 Years in Prison, another Japanese film from 1967 by Tai Kato. This is a beautifully shot widescreen film um about, you know, crime. It's another crime film. ah but And Ayaka's a gang. And it's got, you know, it's it's got all that stuff in it. But it's it's it's also a little bit of a Western. It's sort of like Ayaka's a Western. It has a Western vibe to it.
00:30:08
Speaker
And um you know it's not a Suzuki film. It's a taikato film. I'm less familiar with him as a filmmaker, but also thoroughly enjoyable. And then we also have ah Viva La Muerte from Fernando Arabal, a French language film from 1971, which is ah right at the end of the Spanish Civil War. And it's you know about a kid who who is who's who's struggling with the possible role that he might have played in an incident that in that deeply, deeply tore his family apart ah during the Spanish Civil War. And it's it's ah it's it's kind of a surrealist movie. It's not a gritty, realist movie. It takes you into some very, very... Some of it's a little dated, but some of it's really stylistically very, very impressive. we Really worth checking out.
00:30:58
Speaker
And then the very, very famous Ciao Pantan by Claude Berry. I am a massive fan of Claude Berry, who of course made Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring, among many other great French films. I had the privilege of interviewing Claude Berry once, right at the end of his career, a legendary filmmaker. This is ah right before he made Jean de Florette. This is from 1983.
00:31:19
Speaker
and is fantastically well restored. um It has an amazing ah performance by Richard Anconina in it, who is playing ah kind of a petty drug dealer in on the outskirts of Paris, and um who has an unbelievably unusual relationship that he forms with this kind of guy who works as a late night garage manager.
00:31:45
Speaker
and um You know, it it's it's ah it's a snapshot of a particular kind of fringe of French life at a very, very difficult point in time. I lived in France not long after this. I know i knew people like this, and boy, it was ah this really captures it. So that's a great film. Charles Benton, one of Claude Berry's very best films.
00:32:06
Speaker
So let's get into the criterion stuff here. ah Let's talk first about Anselm, the VIM vendors film, which just came out last year. That's out in a criterion release because VIM vendors, I guess, is always worth ah anything. this is a This is a documentary, at least a VIM vendors documentary. It's more meditative than anything, kind of of a visual essay.
00:32:30
Speaker
honoring ah the artist, ah the painter, sculptor, Anzeld, Kefau. I didn't expect to like this film and I found myself kind of swept away by it and it doesn't really say anything but it's sort of a it's kind of a trip.
00:32:47
Speaker
Yeah, a lovely film, kind of a one with that film about, I think her name was Nina, the modern dance that he did in 3D, Not Too Terrible to the World Can Go. This is kind of a part that would, lots of interesting, I mean, got Heidegger and all kinds of just, from archival footage, people in this film that,
00:33:17
Speaker
And then, of course, you have the sort of, you know, the part of the film that yeah that is that is made, the narrative sort of parts of the film, all of this sort of squish together into this thing that's really just a Vim vendors film is what it is. Yeah, it is. And but it's it's ah it's it really when Vim is on, he's just he's totally on. Glauber Rocha's Black God, White Devil.
00:33:41
Speaker
ah Made in 1964 is ah you know a movie I had seen a long time ago. I didn't really pay attention to it back then. Kind of a fascinating ah Brazilian movie ah by a filmmaker that it really sort of ah pioneered an entire movement down there. um But anyway, it's about a you know it's about ah a guy who's kind of a petty criminal. he He kills his boss, and then he goes on the lam with his wife doing kind of a little Bonnie and Clyde-esque. and um they wind up, you know, hooking up with some bandits in the wilderness and ah and becomes almost like ah like a renegade Robin Hood activity. And it it it's ah it's ah it's a really interesting commentary on on the instability of Brazilian culture at the time. ah The film got all kinds of acclaim, and I think it's really worth the rediscovering. It has great extras on it.
00:34:35
Speaker
Audio commentary by the restoration producer Lena Mireles. A new interview with film scholar Richard Pena. A really terrific documentary on Glauber Roca called Glauber the movie Labyrinth of Brazil made about 20 years ago. And then there's a documentary on the movement that he founded called Cinnamon Novo, which is always worth checking out. yeah So ah kind of a kind of really cool. We also have Totem.
00:34:59
Speaker
which was in our awards conversation last week, and last week, last year, last yeah last year, Mexican film, ah which based on all the emails that flew back beforehand, I thought, and this was submitted as the Mexican and entry for the Academy Awards, did not get the nomination.
00:35:14
Speaker
But I thought this thing kind of had a chance. It didn't really go anywhere when the voting came around. I'm always sort of fascinated by that. But I actually really like this. I, yeah you know, it's I mean, it's it's a very sweet family drama centers around this kid and and, um you know, the the how how everybody's getting ready for, ah you know, the for this birthday, and and there's ah there's some sadness and trauma wrapped up around this particular birthday celebration, but it's a wonderful, wonderful look at at at life and family through the eyes of a child. I thought it was beautiful and poetic. Lovely, lovely, lovely little movie, yeah. The little girl was great too, Nima Cenitis or something like that. She's terrific.
00:35:55
Speaker
and then a ton of 4ks from criterion starting with all of us strangers the andrew hague film uh also from last year they're releasing a lot of stuff i i'm not a fan of andrew hague and i wasn't a fan of this movie but man a lot of other people are so i don't know were you a fan of this did this did this i thought i thought ah I thought it was a a strong movie performance-wise. it's um ah it's It's a bit of a ghost story. bit of a that yeah you know you You don't really know what you're watching and until you sort of like dig into it. um and you um I don't know. I'm not that big of an Andrew Hague fan. I thought um Jamie Bell. yeah
00:36:32
Speaker
was the extraordinary thing in this film. There's a small part playing in this fairly complicated movie. So some some really great Paul Muskell was actually very good in it too. Anyway, Andrew Scott um is also, isn't Andrew, who isn't he in, is he gonna be in Gladiator 2? Is that Paul Muskell or something? I forget. It looks like everybody. I don't know who's in Gladiator 2. All I know is that Denzel is in it. That's all I know.
00:36:57
Speaker
I know. In any case, there were some interesting moments in this film. Crichton also has a 4K release of Greg Araki's Teen Apocalypse trilogy. man do Man, do I have mixed feelings about this. ah These are totally effed up, nowhere in the Doom generation. I do not like totally effed up.
00:37:19
Speaker
at all. I don't like nowhere at all. The Doom generation, I kind of sort of like in some ways. um But I'm not an Iraqi fan. I know a lot of people are. I don't have any reason for not really being a fan. It's just too, like, too edgy and aggressive, and I'm too old for that. um Well, yeah, we look totally f-ed up. It's what, 93? I thought it's more than 30-year-old movie. In the midst of the moment, i I remember reviewing all of these films, actually, because I you know i kind of did did all that. In the midst of the moment,
00:37:49
Speaker
HIV, AIDS and all that kind of stuff. ah that The sort of ramped up um anger, maybe a little bit of nihilism that's that are in these movies sort of made yeah sense to me ah in in the midst of all. Today, they sort of play as archive archives of um ah of that moment.
00:38:08
Speaker
uh we're no longer in tha you do want to know what what it felt like back yeah then for this And a half well in up because they cost the cost him that's why he was able to keep making them. I mean, he made very, very ah low budget movies that hit a certain audience. I mean, the the multiplier on them was significant. They didn't make a hundred million dollars, but they made many multiples of their negative costs. So he was, you know, at the time, I don't mean.
00:38:41
Speaker
back to that thing that we talk about again back right back to it. i mean he was He was a filmmaker. He was a filmmaker of that indie moment in the 1990s. These are all from the 1990s, 93, 95, 97. And that was that was a moment for independent filmmakers like this. and And man, we didn't realize we kind of had a golden moment there, but we did.
00:39:01
Speaker
um But yeah, the Doom generation, the best thing here is the audio commentary um with ah with Gregor Rocky and Rose McGowan and Jonathan Skeck. Look, I discovered Rose McGowan, and this is an older commentary. she didn't come Rose McGowan would not talk to any of these people today if they begged her. But um that's where I think everybody discovered Rose McGowan, and um she's not acting anymore. But boy, she was she was really she was something really dynamic back then.
00:39:29
Speaker
ah Speaking of, as long as we're on the kind of on the punk fringes, we got ourselves a criterion 4K of Repo Man by the the great Alex Cox, who also does not work anymore. um This is from 1984. He was ahead of the curve on all these indie films. I remember seeing this in the theater my first year at UCLA and thinking that, look, buddy of mine from ah from UCLA, from film school, I was talking to him on the phone a couple of days ago and he says to me, he says,
00:39:58
Speaker
I love that movie. Just out of the blue, he's talking about Repo Man. I said, you know what's out in a 4K now? He goes, I love that movie. That is just a perfect film. I like saw it at the right moment in my life. It just changed everything. And you know, Repo Man is a really off the wall movie, but Alex Cox wasn't off the wall guy.
00:40:15
Speaker
and yeah it's just yeah yeah again a movie for the today you can't make this movie uh this movie you can't be but in 1984 that particular moment uh this was the sort of little uh movie that you can make particularly via guys like Harry Dean Stanton you know and uh roaming around the movie and and and they sort of made sense it it again it spoke to a certain sort of grunge culture, and ah nihilism, ah that you know, I can remember now I was older than all these people. um Even 30 years ago, I was always, you know, so, so to me, these people were all obnoxious, these kids roaming around, ah doing all with all this sort of nihilistic yeah stuff. But, but I appreciate it now. I appreciate it now. And it is a time capsule. It really is a time capsule. And what's really cool is it has the original audio commentary, which includes its executive producer, whom we always forget, Mike Nesmith. See? Mike Nesmith of the monkeys. So, you know, that's really cool too.
00:41:17
Speaker
um I'll tell you what movie's been out on 4K overseas for a long time, so it's nice to finally have it out here on Criterion, Long Good Friday. John McKenzie's amazing gangster film with Bob Hoskins and Helen Mirren. It's the movie that put Bob Hoskins on the map. Man, he is absolutely terrifying. This is ah the quintessential grungy 1980s, and it is from 1980. British gangster movies. One of the great gangster movies of all time in any language, straight up, ah Phil Mayer, the director of photography, was involved in actually restoring this and and putting it on 4K. And it's just fantastic. You get the John McKenzie original, John McKenzie commentary.
00:42:02
Speaker
get a great documentary just made a few years ago called an accidental studio all about handmade films which you know this film wouldn't exist without handmade and then also a documentary uh on the making of the film that includes interviews with just about everybody and uh it's it's just a great bunch of extras the long good friday finally um Bob hawkkins was so, I mean, Bob's been going for a while now, but Bob bob really had a heck of a career. Oh, so good. ah at yeah Playing all kinds of, including some comics, but Helen Mirren in this film. And if you look closely, you're going to see Pierce Brosnan in this movie. i use yo Yeah, exactly. He's one of those guys. bob bob had ah ah Bob had a crush on my wife. You you know about this. week go like And he he used to hang around. The the movie he was making in Hollywood. day It was so funny. ah But yeah, Bob Hoskins loved him. ah We also have another Vim vendors film from last year, which is the one that did get an Oscar nomination ah from Japan. The weirdest thing to me, Japan gets an Academy Award nominated foreign language film directed by a German guy, which goes right back to to the only Academy award that Akira Kurosawa ever won for a Russian movie.
00:43:15
Speaker
Right? It's just it's it's weird to me when these things happen. Anyway, ah Perfect Days is a movie that that that not everybody appreciated on the same level because it effectively is a very, very simple movie um the starring Koji Okusho, the wonderful Japanese actor who seems to show up in everything that gets released. But ah he plays a guy who just cleans bathrooms and toilets in in Tokyo. But he yeah as as is so often the case in Japan,
00:43:43
Speaker
This is not just a job to him. He's not a janitor. He's not a custodian. He's an artist. This is ah it's a place where he listens to people, and he observes people, and he takes his job very seriously. And then you learn more about him and his past, and his family, and his daughter. And there's a whole other narrative that kind of unfolds here. But it's a movie that I thought, I'm like, you serious? Jim Vim made a movie about a guy cleaning toilets in Japan. I am so not into this movie. And then I watched it, and I thought, I get it. It's just it's kind of poetry and and and beautiful, in a way.
00:44:14
Speaker
It's true, oh yeah, it absolutely is. The last scene of that film is just when he's sitting there in the car, and he smiles, and he cries, and he smiles, and he cries. Oh my God, oh my God, that is just exquisite, exquisite. Todd Salons, another interesting filmmaker, indie guy from the 90s as well.
00:44:37
Speaker
ah I interviewed Todd Salons once. Now Todd Salons has made some very disturbing movies. This is Happiness. This is a 4K of happiness, which is sort of the film that triggered it all. And ah it's it's funny, it's disturbing.
00:44:54
Speaker
It is dark, it is weird, and it's it all takes place in New Jersey among a group of people who are all just absolutely just on the fringes of American society and weird deviant sexual inclinations. And um it is, it really is pushing a lot of buttons you might not want pushed, but it does them brilliantly. And I remember interviewing salons in, I think it was the Formosa Cafe. and oh yeah And I, you know, when you meet Todd Salons, he's, he, it's like, I mean, at the time, I'm I sat down and I thought i I can't and I shook his hand and I honestly thought I was gonna break it. Right? Like, like, he's he was about like, like five, three,
00:45:42
Speaker
He's wafer thin, he probably weighed about 98 pounds, and he's and his hair is thin. He just looks, he looks small and emaciated and sickly, and you can't really picture this guy directing a movie. Like we think of directing as John Ford, man. You get out there with the, you you run a production. And I remember asking him, I was just curious. I'm like, so, i mean you you know, you stepped away from filmmaking, you rode, and then you came back to us. How does it feel getting back in the director's chair?
00:46:09
Speaker
And i was I was kind of hoping for an answer that said like, oh, he was great, man. He's like getting back in the saddle. And his answer to me was, and I'll do my best impression. He goes. Oh, it was so much stress. It was just horrible, horrible stress. And he hated it. He hated it. And it was being totally truthful, too. Todd looks like one of the characters in his films, frankly. And I think right before this, I guess it was Welcome to the Dollhouse, another extremely disturbing- Which one sundance? Which one sundance? Yeah.
00:46:43
Speaker
Yeah, you know, Phil Seymour Hoffman, of course, yeah you know, you're one of the day in this and this film, along with, oh, I guess a couple of films that he did with PTA Paul Thomas Anderson, film they kind of kind of pushed Phil Seymour Hoffman forward for so that was really this film has an unbelievable cast.
00:47:01
Speaker
I mean, even at the time, if you look at this today, I mean, here we go. ah Elizabeth Ashley, Lara Flynn Boyle, Ben Gazzara, Jared Harris, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Louise Lassard, John Lovitz, Cameron Mannheim, Cynthia Stevenson. I mean, it it yeah on and on and on it goes. This is a phenomenal cast of actors. It is phenomenal what he did here, ah produced by Christine Bichon and Ted Hope. you know, to legendary yeah producers of independent films in the 90s. I mean, it's a, but man, you got to be in the right frame of mind or this thing will just tear you apart. It'll just, it'll it'll rip your limb from limb. It's not an easy film to watch.
00:47:41
Speaker
and And again, i yeah I have to say it again, another time capsule. another This is 1998. Another time capsule of of concerns and worries and oxed that was pervasive during a period. Speaking of the 90s, one of the best films I've ever seen, not only in the 90s, but ever, also from 1993, the co-winner at the Cannes Film Festival, along with the piano.
00:48:05
Speaker
farewell my concubine, the great Zhang Yimao film, ah one of the most central movies in my life. i i just this is just To me, this is filmmaking perfection.
00:48:15
Speaker
I remember the the press screening very well at Cannes. This is the the non Harvey Weinstein butchered a cut of it in 4K and it it just could not be more beautiful. I can't recommend this film more highly. ah It is it is a a spectacular story about two Peking opera singers and their relationship across many decades of Chinese history.
00:48:40
Speaker
They were trained as young, you know, as children in this brutal, paking opera academy. They become superstars, one of them straight, one of them gay, one plays the male parts, the other plays the female parts, and how their lives converge and diverge through all of this upheaval of Chinese history, World War II and the aftermath and communism. It is just, it is an epic film, and it is so beautifully photographed. And ah the late Leslie Chung,
00:49:05
Speaker
His greatest performance, bar none. I still remember us interviewing everybody at the ah the Mandarin restaurant in Cannes, which is the main kind of Chinese restaurant in the middle of town. And Leslie Chung you know could was in his element because they were playing all of his songs over the house over the house speakers. And he was he he was kind of pointing out, he goes, they're playing my songs. And he was you know he was a narcissist, but what an amazing actor. And this film just floors me to this day.
00:49:33
Speaker
Some of the extras here include a new conversation between a ah scholar named Michael Berry and Janet Yang, who, of course, is the producer who is presently president of the Academy, as well as a documentary from 2003 on the film, and an amazing, wonderful 1993 interview ah that Charlie Rose, the sadly disgraced Charlie Rose, but Charlie Rose had a great interview with Chen Kaiga that is really beautiful. And having interviewed Chen Kaiga He's a great interview. He's fluent in English, has an amazing personal history, and what a beautiful, beautiful movie. And to just promote that as well, at the same time, another Chen Kaiga film, lesser seen, but also wonderful, is also Alan Blu-ray. It's called Together. And a lot of people may have missed it. This is from 2003. And it is this beautiful, beautiful story about this kid in Beijing who is a violin prodigy.
00:50:24
Speaker
and who eventually winds up being sort of torn between his very, very um tough father and an even tougher violin teacher and instructor who's kind of taken him under his wing. It's ah it's a great movie. I mean, it's again, Chen Kaiga does Chinese drama better than anybody else. He's just wonderful. Jean-Pierre Melville's ah The Samurai, we just lost Alain Delon. And boy, Tim, he just is so beautiful in this movie. And I mean, Alain Delon was beautiful.
00:50:54
Speaker
Not, I mean- Yeah, um it's funny because we were talking about him um in juxtaposition to- Yeah, and Belmondo. Belmondo. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:51:07
Speaker
um and and of and of course built ah bemondo a handsome rugged but handsome you know i was yeah a de long literally beautiful Uh, but equally scary, right? And Romando looked like he could beat you to death. Uh, Alain Delon looked like he would, uh, connive your, your murder in an alley. and But either way, yeah you're dead. Uh, and, and they were going to get the girl. Well, I mean, it's, it's one of the all-time great French crime films, Melville, one of the all-time great
00:51:38
Speaker
filmmakers of this particular genre made in 1967 a beautiful, just unbelievably spectacular shimmering, shining 4K from ah Criterion, and another must-own classic for your collection.
00:51:53
Speaker
And we got two more from the Criterion 4Ks, and then we'll move on and get some TV and some other 4Ks under our belts here. um We talked about Chris Christofferson losing him at the top of the show. And one of his very best performances for me, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid by Sam Peckinpah. Now on Criterion 4K, 50th anniversary release.
00:52:16
Speaker
I, you know, I mean, it has the it it hit wow. and then i knows Wow. and Yeah, yeah. Twenty yeah yeah was fifty one. Technically, it came out in seventy three, I think. um Yeah, man. ah Him and James Coburn in that movie. All right. Just fantastic. and And it has two cuts on it, too. It has the original theatrical cut, which is one hundred and six minutes. And then it has the ah final preview cut, which is one hundred and twenty two minutes, it's almost 20 minutes longer.
00:52:44
Speaker
And um you know what, i yeah and there's a third version on here too, which is the 50th anniversary release, which is almost the same length as the preview cut. But i yeah you know what, man, the theatrical cut works for me. I'm sorry. I don't know that this movie needs more than that. I mean, if you're a completist, that's fine. but Well, it's the only one I ever saw. It's a theatrical cut. And again, that cast dude, that cast, Jason Robart, and Richard Jekyll, and you got Bob Dylan hanging around in that movie. And it's just a hell of a thing. And they got a Dylan interview on here, which I watched. And it's really, really beautiful. There's also an archival interview with James Coburn, which makes me really miss him. Coburn, those teeth, man, when he would smile.
00:53:30
Speaker
that that Those teeth are like half the size of his face. What ah what an amazing actor. Just an incredible presence. our may note And anyway, there and the audio commentary here for the for this release features um Michael Shreigau, who is a colleague of ours in lafow ah Lafka, along with the Roger Spottiswood. Shreigau is just a great guy. and I always enjoy him and you know getting in the mix on these things. And then lastly, now on 4K, a movie I never expected to have the criterion label, but here it is, Risky Business and Tom Cruise. yeah I don't know that I thought about 83, but now that it is a criterion, it makes sense to me totally and completely, Brickman's movie. ah This is again, so Paul Brickman.
00:54:21
Speaker
director, yeah his script. You just can't do this stuff nowadays. thinks You sit down, you write a movie, you go, you direct it, you you direct the script that you wrote. It's not adapted from a book or anything like that. And then it's this sexy little movie with all kinds of stuff in it that, again, you just can't do nowadays. I mean, a story about a kid hiring a hooker.
00:54:50
Speaker
a high school kid hiring a hooker. And then all of it ended up ending up with him getting into the college of his dreams, you know, but it's fantastic. And again, one of those movies, I don't know if this movie made, it's just the one that made Tom Cruise a movie star. He had a few movies before this, but just a movie that made him a movie star. It's the one that pushed him over the top.
00:55:10
Speaker
Basically, this is the one that pushed him over the top. It was the dance, the sunglasses. yeah This is when when people decided, this guy has got something special. And then he went on to do some some gritty stuff, like all the right moves. And you know he he did ah he did a few other ensemble things. But eventually, then i mean once he's doing you know Top Gun and all ah yeah that, then the gang game over, then he's he's he's off the races. But I will say, there's there's something funny about the depiction of prostitution in movies. It has a weird trajectory, because you have Butterfield 8 back in like the 50s, early 60s, whenever that was. And that was just, oh my gosh. And then not so many years later, suddenly, Jane Fonda is mixing it up in Clute. And it's like, oh my gosh. yeah And then somehow, we get into the 80s, and and like it's glamorous to be a hooker. It's like, oh my gosh, Rebecca de Mornin. And, you know, and pretty and pretty. Oh, my God. You know, oh, my gosh. What was that? What was that one with Mike Keaton? Yeah. And ah and and the Fonz. Yeah. And I mean, were hookery hookers. Oh, my gosh. And that exquisite. My favorite thing in the world was crazy. And yeah, but then hookers were all the rage. Do we want to dive into TV or 4K? What what next?
00:56:31
Speaker
Let's go to the school TV. we do have Oh, and by the way, at the end of the show, I'm going to i'm goingnna let Tim go. And then I'm going to dive into a whole bottle in a lot of Asian-themed stuff that we haven't been able to cover of late. But we really should go through, because there's some great, great Asian titles that are out from Wellgo and some other companies. So we're going to do a segment on that and just wrap that out. I'll talk really quickly here a couple of things. They're sort of one-offs. The Adventures and ah of Ozzy and Harriet video scrapbook. so MPI has been releasing all the Ozzy and Harriet seasons. And ah this, it kind of goes with it. it's This is not any episodes from the show. This is just featurettes on the show and on the family. And they're talking to Ozzy. And they've got commercials and promotional spots and ah you know all kinds of sort of support. This is like a bunch of extras all put together on onto a two DVD set ah from MPI.
00:57:25
Speaker
so I mean it's it's it you know it complements the ah the rest of the stuff it should probably have been extras but it's not but there it is it's out there for fans and then the icons unearthed series the documentary series that we've been getting from mill creek has another uh entry it's icons unearthed Fast and Furious, which is six parts on the Fast and Furious films with lots of interviews and and hours and hours of extras talking to the people who were responsible for ah putting together, you know, involved in not per se, the I mean, Tyrese Gibson is is interviewed here, but this really gets into
00:58:03
Speaker
the backstory of those films as these as this series does do, right? Icons on Earth, it's all about backstory. So there's you know illegal drag racing, everything that inspired the first film and then took it to to ridiculous heights.
00:58:16
Speaker
but ah the Ridiculous being the key word. I had forgotten too that the first film, and the first the first sequel in the franchise went straight to video. It didn't even go to the movies. and Then they brought it back to the movies and my gosh, it blew up against crazy.
00:58:30
Speaker
It's nuts. But anyway, um Star Trek Discovery, dude, final season. You're a bigger fan of this than I am. what ah well I'm a fan of it in in in in in that it is a part of this the story. and i and i And I generally speaking just make make a whole lot of room for my Star Trek lore. Broadly speaking, what I'm a fan of about the show is the way it sort of works itself.
00:58:56
Speaker
and into into the into the dynamic of the story. There's a whole bunch of stuff that bugs me about Star Trek Discovery, Star Trek cards, Star Trek lower decks. I can i could i can rip all of it to pieces, but but i but I let it live ah because I appreciate that what it's actually doing, and this is what people, we all Star Trekkers or Trekkies or Trekkers don't get.
00:59:16
Speaker
if that it's bringing the in an entirely new ah set of fans of people who will who will who will be for years beyond us ah being because of the elements that these shows bring into the lore. And I like that. I like the notion that these shows are looking at this lore and saying, you know what this lore needs? A little bit more yeah of the rest of us.
00:59:40
Speaker
which is great because that's what Gene Roddenberry figured out in the first place. When he sat down to write that original show, he's like, you know what? Gonna have put me an Asian kid on this deck. He goes, you know what? Gonna need a Russian kid. Gonna need a Russian kid. People are like, how Russian? What the hell? He's like, no, put the Russian kid on the deck. Put the Russian kid on deck and But people were bananas. So um I understand that and I think that the producers of the these not particularly fantastic shows kind of get back to it. It's funny too. We we think back on ah the fact that Star Trek and people talk about the ah in in the the episode Plato's Stepchildren,
01:00:19
Speaker
when Miguelito Lovelace is getting manipulated by the ah by all the the you know the the the Romanesque aliens with the psychic powers, and they they force Uhura and Kirk to kiss, and that was television's first interracial kiss, but they were trying not to. so it's sort of But we also forget, Star Trek also had the second interracial kiss in Ilan of Trois, right? That was the second interracial kiss, and that one was full on.
01:00:47
Speaker
Oh my gosh, he was so beautiful. I was still in love with her. It was insane. Yeah. So, you know, they they were they were busting all kinds of taboos. And yeah, it's funny how how putting the Russian kid in was was actually a bigger deal at a certain point than anything else. It was a bigger deal.
01:01:04
Speaker
yeah anyway well as a discovery if you if you like it i guess you like it it never really worked for me but we're gonna go ahead and give away four of these four of the blu-rays of star trek discovery the final season uh send us an email to gods at digigods or it got gods at cinegods.com, either one. ah Make sure it gets to us by October 20th and we will alert you within 24 hours whether you want or not and we'll ship it off. Just put the word discovery in the subject line. That's all I need, discovery. And ah four lucky listeners will get that.
01:01:39
Speaker
um We also have season one from AMC's Walking Dead, the ones who live. Tim, why do they keep trying to make more of these? I don't understand. How's this?
01:01:51
Speaker
Man, yeah look, ah yeah what so the original Walking Dead you know series, I think it's 2010, man. ah so So we're fourteen going on 15 years deep with several different series now. um I gotta tell you, I tapped out in the middle of season one of the first series. I don't under so i mean like i watched three episodes of this, and i don't it's ah it's ah it's a it's a um a steel book, and I just don't understand I mean, it's, I don't understand what they think they're getting out of it. ah Andrew Lincoln is a wonderful actor, right? I have loved, I've loved Andrew Lincoln for, you know, ever since his amazing moment in love, actually, right? With the signs. I mean, look, he kills it. He's a great actor, but I kind of want him to do something else here. I'd like to pull him out of this. And they're, they're trying to sort of, you know, I mean, they're really riding on him and, and, ah you know, deny Guerreira is, ah is wonderful as well. But,
01:02:48
Speaker
I mean, I i feel like it just I'm done. And I didn't even watch this show religiously, but... When I look at the end of the day, yeah you watch these shows, and and the reason why it was sort of interesting in the first place, is graphic novels notwithstanding, um is that it's that the graphic novels and the early um ah elements of the series were really about this thing that happens. And blah, blah, blah, the data walking there, with why, why, what's going on, what's going on, why is this happening, why is this happening? Eventually that question yeah goes away, um and we start to and we start to be in a whole bunch of soap operas.
01:03:22
Speaker
these little sort of community soap operas, and each series has a community. Now, with the soap opera, it will exist in the context of zombies. But what we're watching are a bunch of soap operas. And yeah, I got a little sick of it. Well, another one I'm kind of sick of is the Vikings stuff. This is Vikings Valhalla season one. Oh, yeah. It's like, man, people, you know, why, why? Why? Anyway, this is You know, I appreciate that they're they're getting into a lot of history here. Leif Erickson and, you know, ah Harold the Fairhair and all this kind of stuff. But, ah you know, I mean, we've kind of had years and years of this stuff on TV and I don't see that it's doing anything new. Now, maybe that's the point. There's eight episodes here. Maybe the whole point is that this is not doing anything new. This is for people who want more and more of the same. But, you know, I kind of like something new. But anyway,
01:04:21
Speaker
Yeah, I got to tell you this particular one, and it's it in and I have no problem with this. But um he did the the the women in and in that original Viking series were really kind of just like, yeah, true. ma You know, yeah and ah the women in this one, yeah, swing swords and and chop off a few heads, which I think it's mostly it. But but OK, yeah, you know what? Let the chicks swing some chips. And then we we have animated ah from the DC animated universe, ah Justice League Crisis on Infinite Earth's part three. Look, if you saw the live action version of this, and this is a famous thing on in the comic books. so this is
01:05:03
Speaker
this This adheres more closely to the comic book narrative than did the Arrowverse version of this story, which crossed over all of their different Arrowverse shows. ah But I really liked what they did with the Arrowverse. I liked how it crossed over with the Arrow and Supergirl and Flash. and ah yeah all the and it did it that was That was really kind of fun.
01:05:24
Speaker
ah This doesn't doesn't rise to the that level of enjoyment for me. But that being said, ah it's closer to what the comic books did. So, you know, ah take that for what it is.
01:05:37
Speaker
It's darker. And in and and you a lot of folks like this stuff dark. you they don't they They want no humor. They want no romance. They want it dark. This this this will give you a fix. As will Watchmen Chapter 1. Not the live action Watchmen, but the animated Watchmen Chapter 1, also from ah the DC line. Also in this one is 4K. This is ah looking really, really good. Again, I'm not a crazy Watchmen fan. Didn't like the Zack Snyder film particularly in any cut.
01:06:08
Speaker
I like the TV version on HBO, but not because it was Watchmen, but because they did something interesting with it that that was not necessarily part of the part of the original comic lore. But this is this is very faithful to the comic lore. It's fine, ah but you gotta be really, really into the ah the the comic to sort of vibe to this, because otherwise you'll you'll be completely lost. I can listen to Adrienne Barbeau's, Adrienne Barbeau's voice is, you know, the backless of her voice.
01:06:37
Speaker
If you do anything, ah Sally Jupiter. She's Sally Jupiter and Adrian Barbeau. I mean, man, good stuff. Wow. Always good. ah Halo season two, we've got on Blu-ray and on 4K. The 4K is a steel book. The Blu-ray is not. ah Halo, you know, ah a video game that I know a lot of people absolutely thoroughly love. And then they have turned it into a big old hanging live action show that has a lot of yeah I mean, it's a it's just violent on a next level. And the result of that is that it doesn't have a whole lot of story to it. It has a lot of actors I really like. It's nice to see Bochim Woodbine again. I haven't seen him in a few years. And Natasha McElhone, I haven't seen in a few years. ah So that's all. I like seeing these these really solid actors come back. But otherwise, it's just a lot of special effects and a lot of violence.
01:07:34
Speaker
Yeah, you have Pablo in there. I love Pablo, Liv's brother um yeah playing the Master Chief, ah which is funny because the Master Chief never took his helmet off, but Pablo never puts his helmet on. But up its but it's it's it's a cool show in that it tries to follow the narrative line of the actual game.
01:07:54
Speaker
um ah generally speaking the stuff that happens in the game happens in the show and then it goes off and in whatever tributaries it takes but it comes back around to something that happens in that game or or at least a a part of the like cutscene narrative a little tributaries in the game I gotta dig that or Boris Sherman's a big old Halo fan but does he play the game? ah see see oh you play yeah if you play the game I think it's a lot more meaningful I think it's a lot more meaningful I also have a couple here from Acorn TV, ah some you know really good British and British diaspora stuff. ah This is from New Zealand. It is the Broken Wood Mysteries series 10. I got news for you. Series 10, pretty much the same as series one through nine.
01:08:40
Speaker
and yeah I mean, it's it's, but it's solid. it's It's British mystery stuff. Forget that it's in New Zealand. It's still, you know, the same school of ah of storytelling. yeah And yeah, I mean, it's, ah you know, it's just, ah it's really solid. And I think on a certain level, it makes you rethink whether or not you want to be a tourist to New Zealand, because there's a lot of weird, eerie, dark crap going on down there. It's just like, wow, I thought it was just all fun and games, maybe not.
01:09:10
Speaker
I watch, I love watching these and a whole series of these various different sort of things because ah yeah, all kinds of people show up in them that we know as just, you know, movie stars, Cate Blanchett and and and the Hemsworths, you know, and they all, you know, just all these people who are to us, yeah but down there, they started this like these TV people.
01:09:32
Speaker
you know like I don't know whoever yeah and uh and and you watch these shows right that's yeah that's kate blanchett the hell is showing this tv this bullshit new zealand tv show for well it's because that's what you know and then there's season three of the madame blanc mysteries now this is what i i've now i didn't see series one or two of uh the madame blanc mysteries but i'm going to assume that season uh series one and two are pretty much like series series three so here's what this is you You basically have the ah the wonderful Sally Lindsay who created the show. She stars, she created the show and she stars in it. She is this ah character named Jean White who it basically, she's English and she solves mysteries in the beautiful South of France. ah She is also an antique expert.
01:10:21
Speaker
And ah she has a you know sidekick ah played by Steve Edge and and other people that she's sort of involved with. But ultimately, as I'm watching this, I've become very aware of the fact that this is basically murder, she wrote, except instead of writing novels, she collects antiques and she's in the south of France. in Otherwise, it's murder, she wrote.
01:10:41
Speaker
it's it's it's it's murder It's like a murder she wrote stuffed inside an episode of the UK Antique Roadshow. That's it. There it is. um And then we got a bunch of stuff that is ah mostly, but not exclusively, from ah CBS and Paramount here. A couple of things that aren't, but they're all sort of in the same vein. This is all our our sort of cup and emergency first responder shows, which are all kind of of a piece. They all sort of resemble each other, starting with the season two of Fire Country, um which I have a hard time watching, I will be honest, because I live i have lived through a lot of brush fires. I think people who have listed this show know that this show was suspended on a couple of occasions, and you and Mark went and did it in my absence while I was fighting brush fires and evacuating. And you know it um it's ah it's a rough thing. so Yeah, you know ah ah fair enough. I'm glad some people can enjoy this show. I cannot. But there it is, season two of Fire Country. ah We have a final season of NCIS Hawaii. they they're they're They're calling it quits. um So you know there it is. I'm kind of surprised that they went there. um But you know what's LL Cool J going to do now? but That's what I want to know.
01:12:04
Speaker
I was always open that the that the ah inside s Los Angeles boy boys, LL and Chris would would would like get a trip to Hawaii and then have to team up with the inside Hawaii people. Yeah. So anyway, NCIS Hawaii, they're ah they're they're finally closing up shop. I think people are getting a little tired of it. Speaking of.
01:12:25
Speaker
They brought back the origins, though. They brought back the first one. They brought back they brought back Mark Harmon. You know what you know what what has what is is just stunning to me is not just that the original Law & Order is now in its 750th season, but Law & Order SVU is at season 25.
01:12:47
Speaker
25 years of this show. i I just don't even know what to make of this, but I will say this. I love meeting people who have no idea that Ice Cube but was a rapper.
01:13:02
Speaker
yeah
01:13:06
Speaker
Oh, oh, I see. I see. I see. I see. Yeah. I see. I see. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah i believe you know what? They probably they they probably have no idea. wouldn't good yeah They wouldn't know that it as well. Anyway, I was well for that matter. ikeed that there Yeah. For that matter. Exactly. A rapper who got in trouble for making songs. You were pretty funky killer.
01:13:28
Speaker
which he goes on the play five but I guess that's poetic justice in a weird way. ah But anyway, anyway, yeah, you know, um it's sort of amazing to me. They've kept they've kept the the core of this Dick Wolf show together for forever. Mariska Hargitay continues to just kick it. They've changed a few people, you know, some have died, like, you know, that that's always going to be a... but Bells are passed. Bells are passed. But, yeah um you know, it's, boy, I'll tell you, they they just keep this thing going. And it' and it's, it's, well...
01:14:03
Speaker
Well, you know what's interesting about these shows that we're talking about right now. yeah I mean, the this one in the NCIS. and um There was a time when this would happen, but it but but it would be a decade or two before another show even came close. So Bedanza was one of them ah from my youth. Gunsmoke was one of them from my youth. um ah And then Mash was the next one, probably.
01:14:29
Speaker
you know that was yeah and and But you know now, there are four or five or six of them to to be on any given network at any given time. I'm talking about, I'm talking Simpsons, I'm talking, you know, all of them. I can remember when the Flintstones was like a big deal because the Flintstones had run something like 11 golf seasons, something ridiculous like that. ah but But now, so so something has happened.
01:14:51
Speaker
in the world of a certain kind of media anyway that makes this this possible for for i an actual show or or or series of shows to become like little industries. It's industry is really true. so so and in An industry, people have had children grow up I've got my, movie my, my, my, my, my, my goddaughter hangs out with LL Cool J's people because she's a hairdresser and LL Cool J has these daughters and, and, you know, all the stuff like this. so And, and, and she literally grew up watching LL Cool J on television. He knows LL was a rapper. He has a new album, by the way. But LL has spent more time in front of them on television than he ever, ever, ever spent in front of them. Isn't that amazing? Isn't that amazing? That's wild to me.
01:15:40
Speaker
uh... we've also got a season two of a richer and we're given away and this as well we got five of these so again put richer in the subject lines and many mail at god's a digit gods dot com or god's it's any gods dot com uh... by october twentieth and within twenty four hours we will let you know if you are a winner and uh... you can expect a uh... beautiful or k ultra h d of season two of a richer i was I like, a I'm sorry man, I want to like season two of Reacher. I do too. like I like season two of Reacher. Better than season one, I think they got their vibe on this. And and I think Alan Richardson is Jack Reacher more than Tom Cruise was, right? Oh yeah, ah physically number one. Reacher was 6'5", this guy's about 6'5". And season two is better because they're done with all that introduction stuff.
01:16:35
Speaker
So there's no more of that stupid, awkward dialogue of that that's meant to introduce character. ah That's all gone. And plus, season two of Reacher is yeah about revenge, ah because you know some stuff goes down. You watch the the show, you'll see what goes down. But it's about revenge. It's ah it's is's about you did something to my boy, and you're going to have to pay for that. And and and that's the Jack Reacher that I know from those books.
01:17:00
Speaker
ah The Jack Reaches, I know from those books, you do something to one of his people, you're going to have to pay for that. ah And and in and and is he's not all heroic, he's not all, you know no no you know what you did, and you're going to have to pay for that. And he makes them pay it's in season two. I still enjoy the Tom Cruise movies, but Tom Cruise plays a different character. He's playing Tom Cruise.
01:17:21
Speaker
Oh, he's playing a much tinder. He's playing his Mission Impossible part. I mean, it's, you know, I know he wanted to mix it up, but he still winds up being Ethan Hunt. It just does. It's still Ethan Hunt. No, no. Ethan Hunt will not do the things to people that Jack Reacher will do to people. Very true. Jack Reacher will kill you. But that's your fault. Then my friend Jason Begay, who is just a super great guy and continues to mix it up, Chicago PD season 11. I am amazed that he has mixed it up this long and he is so grateful for this and he's such a good actor. The world that Dick Wolf created on the Chicago shows, it transcends even what was going on in the Law and Order shows.
01:18:12
Speaker
Yeah, this is that this is terrific. ah Thirteen episodes from season 11, and it continues to do exactly what it was. And it's just it's ah it's a terrific ongoing show, one of the best police shows on TV, I think, one of the best casts. And then CSI Vegas, the final season, they're wrapping it up as well. I was never a CSI fan. um But CSI Vegas, I will say, it it does what the Hawaii shows do which is it uses the Vegas backdrop very well. I go back to Dantana and the original Vegas, which I just loved. I mean, you know, guy who parks his car in his living room, yeah that's one of the best things that ever happened on TV. But, ah you know, I can get with CSI because of the Vegas backdrop, because it's really interesting, just like I can get with any, just about any show shot in Hawaii, however stupid it is. I love the i love the c i the CSI shows for for this reason only. They were created by a guy. Yeah. Who was just a guy.
01:19:11
Speaker
driver, you know, you're driving and he had an idea and ah in a concept and he pitched. And somebody who could pull who who could who could pull the green light, yeah pull the green light. This guy, was not he who was not he was not a film school guy, he was not he was not a Hollywood guy, he was just a guy. He says, you know what? I got an idea. You know and you know what? That's a great idea. like We're going to make a TV show out of it. and and And it turns out we're going to make a whole bunch of TV shows so out of this. After he's Zooker or something like that, I think is his name.
01:19:42
Speaker
Great story. cool Great story. And then for some weird godforsaken reason, they decided to make a TV show out of Ted. And we have season one here, and they take out Mark Wahlberg and swap in a kid. And it takes place in the 90s. And ah the only thing that's in common is the bear, of Seth MacFarlane's, you know, nat nasty, naughty bear. why yeah I don't know, man. It's not...
01:20:10
Speaker
And what do they say to them in the 90s? I mean, because is he supposed to be that guy, the same guy, but only 30 years earlier? I don't know.
01:20:22
Speaker
oh I don't want to give anything away here because there's ah there's a there's a thing there's a thing that's going on and the way that it ties in with the Ted movies, ah it it it goes for a high school angle. let me just i'll just I'll just leave it at that. There's a high school angle to this.
01:20:39
Speaker
and I don't know. It's like everything that worked about the movies, it's it's of the same world. It's of the same universe, right? I mean, it certainly ties in, but it doesn't tie in in a way that I care. Does that make sense? Yeah. So, I mean, if you love the movies, I guess you'll probably like the show, but whatever.
01:21:00
Speaker
I like Seth. And Seth, generally speaking, is engaged in something clever. Yeah. Orville. Yeah. That sort of Star Trek-y, sort of, but not Star Trek-y. It's not just a joke. There's something really clever going on on Orville that's very Star Trek-esque. So anyway, I was wondering if it's the same. Yeah, less so. I'd say less so.
01:21:26
Speaker
I think he spread himself too thin to be honest. I think Seth MacFarlane is doing too many, you know, singing engagements and just doing too much stuff. He's spreading himself thin and it would be nice to see a little focus. Like the reason the South Park guys, the reason that that that those guys are not making more movies is because they put all their energies into South Park.
01:21:45
Speaker
Now I'd love for them to do something else, but they don't want to do anything. They they want to make South Park you know what it is, and it's it's making them ridiculously wealthy year over year, so I guess I can't begrudge them. but Yeah, yeah and keep and keep the quality up. keeping it yeah Exactly. And then we have a bunch of complete series here. ah One, two, three, four, five, six, seven complete series box sets. Going to roll through these real quickly. um The first one, ah give the Alaskans starring Roger Moore. Tim, give me one word to describe your experience with the Alaskans.
01:22:23
Speaker
I don't have a... Have you ever heard of this series? Oh, see, I had never heard of this. I'm like, what? What is this? I thought he did The Saint. So apparently Roger Moore was not just The Saint and then became James Bond. No, there was a Warner Brothers television series called The Alaskans.
01:22:42
Speaker
that Roger Moore starred in, in 1959 and 1960, which I had never heard of, where it all takes place in the 1890s in the Yukon during the gold rush. It's a very unusual show. I mean, I guess it's kind of cool. It's sort of a Western and sort of a Sort of, I mean, you know, at a moment when they're having a lot of Western TV shows, but it's, uh, it's basically like, uh, gun smoke, except in the Yukon. Lots of, lots ah lots of cool guest stars. That's what I always love about these things. I mean, you know, like, uh, we were talking about James Goldberg and he shows up, Alan Hale shows up before he was,
01:23:17
Speaker
ah the the skipper, Werner Klemperer shows up before he was ah you know Colonel Klink. you know So you see all these people before they actually become anybody important, but yeah, it's an odd series. I had no idea, no idea this even existed, but they restored the hell out of it. Gorgeous, black and white, couldn't couldn't be better. um And then we have something I have been waiting for pretty much ever since I was about 13, the complete collection of super friends.
01:23:46
Speaker
Ladies and gentlemen, the yeah this includes Super Friends from 1973, the 1978 reboot and the reboot from 1980, which ran until 1983.
01:24:03
Speaker
um So it has Super Friends, the all new Super Friends Hour, Challenge of the Super Friends, the world's greatest Super Friends, Super Friends, the legendary Super Powers Show, and the Super Powers Team Galactic Guardians.
01:24:20
Speaker
all of that in this boxed set, which is going to make my daughter think that I am mentally ill because it's going to keep me preoccupied for weeks on end, watching cartoons that she will not understand. But you know what? All these variations of Super Friends lasted for a good, solid decade and made a lot of children very happy. And I was one of them. I was one of them. Oh my gosh. Casey Kasem did. It was Robin. It was Robin, yeah.
01:24:48
Speaker
And it was the it was i was like that that. And then later, years later, in the 80s, Casey Case was top 40 countdown, top 100 countdown, whatever he's doing on the radio. I would listen to that. Because I wasn't painting a attention. I wasn't looking at the thing. I was thinking, like, Casey Case and stuff, just like that. That's right. That's right. It's in reference. And by and you know the um my favorites are still the ones with Wendy and Marvin. Because the idea of these superheroes going out and doing their thing with a couple of kids who have no powers, putting those kids in danger,
01:25:17
Speaker
I don't know, I guess as a kid I thought this was cool, but now that, you know, as I get older, I'm like, oh my gosh, that was irresponsible. Who are those kids parents? what were that Why are their parents not keeping after? What's going on here? This is really unbelievable. And that that this doesn't make any sense. Anyway, ah HBO's Succession, which was a huge huge success, basically Dallas. But Brian Cox and an amazing supporting cast ah really, really nailed it. And you know Jeremy Strong.
01:25:48
Speaker
went from being just a good character actor to a known TV actor in this, which got him his his role and in The Apprentice, which we talked about on Film Week just a few days ago. And yeahp yeahp yeah he plays Roy Cohn. I think he's due for an Oscar. Everyone has seen him in succession. Everyone loved him in succession. Now he plays ro plays Roy Cohn. How does he not win an Academy Award?
01:26:14
Speaker
Yeah, I think you're right. And he was really, really good. And what was that film last year where he played the kid's grandfather? Armageddon Time. Armageddon Time. The James Gray film. He plays James' grandfather. He plays James' father. The James Gray film. And it was on the bubble then. Yeah, I think so too. I think so too. I mean, he has the great scene in that film. I mean, the great scene. He's a tremendous actor. We also have the complete series on Blu-ray from the Warner Archive collection of Top Cat.
01:26:44
Speaker
which is completing the Hanna-Barbera compendium, the the canon of Hanna-Barbera films. I mean, Top Cat is cute. ah You know, it's ah it's hipster cat and stuff. I don't know that I love like it as much as Yogi Bear and Huckleberry Hound or McGill Gorilla or some of the others, but it's fine. I'm...
01:27:05
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. It was kind of a response, I guess, to, oh, Tom and Jerry and, in you know, some of you. Yeah, it was fine. It was fine. So that's that's there. ah Speaking of the animated stuff, we also have Rick and Morty, the complete seasons one through seven.
01:27:20
Speaker
This show kind of creeps me out. It's not my style of animation. ah Conceptually, it's a little weird. I know it's intended to be, but 71 episodes for people who are into that kind of thing. And a very, very nice ah but Adult Swim DVD Warner Brothers boxed set. Has some ah fun extras and so on it. You know, deleted animatic sketches and behind the scenes featurettes, so you can kind of see how, I mean, this is modern animation, so you can see how they sort of put this stuff together digitally, which is very different from previous generations of cell animation.
01:27:50
Speaker
But yeah, it's it's fine. seven Seven seasons of Rick and Morty ah should do you fine if you if you happen to be a fan. um Young Sheldon. Tim, how do you feel about Young Sheldon, the complete series?
01:28:04
Speaker
look that that was it was a very family friend friendly ah show and and I like I like the through line you know to the guy from the Big Bang Theory they they they kept that guy in mind and crafted the show that gets just straight to him which is exactly what this show does yeah it a lot of ancillary characters do are very very funny it's it's it really is though sort of classic almost 80s sitcom material. I mean, i mean really, just i mean we were talking about Ozzy and Harry a little while ago. This almost yeah lives in that space. ah but its you know And then lastly, we ah talked about the late Paul Reubens, who was also one of the original voice cast members of a Nightmare Before Christmas, who was also on stage with Ken Page and all the others and Catherine O'Hara. And now we've lost two of them. We lost Paul Rubens, and we've lost ah Ken Page. So it's the performances are never going to be the same again. When they lose Danny Elfman, I think it it's over. But anyway, the complete series of Peewee's Playhouse. ah You know what? It's weird watching this again, because this really is a children's show. He went to into being, when he started making the movies, Peewee becomes more of a pop culture teen and young adult phenomenon.
01:29:25
Speaker
This is a kid's show. We forgot that. Yeah, from 1986. Yeah, it's a kid. It's a kid's show meant for kids. Yeah, look, I love some of the people that pop up on this show. Forget Lawrence Fishburne was on the show. Phil Hartman was on this show. But yeah, you're absolutely right. In Path of Merkisson was on the show. I mean, this really sort of heavy,
01:29:49
Speaker
hitting dramatic actors. But it really kind of shows you what their range is all about. ah But you're right, this is absolutely a kid's show. And the commitment of all of these actors to these characters, yeah animatronic characters and live action characters. It was such really, really fantastic. ah It was a pretty great work of genius. Pretty great. but people um You know what, I'd love to have it. Tell me, when when did you ever get, growing up in St. Louis, did you ever get Hobo Kelly?
01:30:16
Speaker
Yeah, I think that might have been local. Hobo Kelly. It's a very odd thing. It was this actress. Look it up look it up on Wikipedia when you have a chance. Hobo Kelly was a local show. it was ah It was a morning show. I'd watch it sometimes before going to school. But it was an actress who would dress up as a hobo and do all these kinds of you know green screen adventures. And it was it was fun, but it was cheap. But I remember, even as a kid,
01:30:40
Speaker
Even as a kid, watching this woman with this makeup, and walking around dressed as a hobo, I remember thinking, that hobo is kind of hot. she's kind of She's kind of hot. Like, she's really cute. She's really... ah <unk> Her name is Sally Baker. Interesting. and It apparently first aired in Illinois, and then on KTTV here in Los Angeles. You know, he as we say, 1965. And then on KCOP, you know, here ah in Los Angeles in 1972. Interesting that it did kind of started... Hobo Kelly. Yeah, I'm looking at her. yeah Yeah, there's a thing there. there I'm telling you.
01:31:18
Speaker
And I'm telling you. There's a thing. All right, 4K. Should we dive into 4K? let's do it all right uh... we have from arrow who is doing a lot of uh... ultra hd four k stuff now the chronicles of riddick limited edition and uh... man they have just shocked fold this thing like crazy david to ease uh... theatrical and directors cuts and uh... you know it's it's just out of control and you you almost forget the pitch black is the first film it's like Chronicles of Riddick is is the beginning of this whole new adventure and it is it is really spectacular at 4k and I didn't even particularly like this film originally but in 4k it it it's kind of cool and that's mostly because the audio the the the lossless audio if you got a kick and system ah man it really it'll i'll I'll put it this way I'm not saying that I did this but it'll wake your family up
01:32:16
Speaker
It really will. um Despicable Me 4 on 4K. It took my daughter to see this just because she wanted to and and I don't particularly like these movies. Love Steve Carell. I will say that. Love Steve Carell and the accent and the whole thing. Love the Minions. But these movies are just too much for me. It's just it's just nonstop mayhem and I kind of check out at a certain point. ah But you know what? The kids love it. My daughter loved it. Minions are funny. There you go.
01:32:46
Speaker
I mean the story here is is kind of ridiculous. is like he goes to he's He's become a good guy, right? And he goes to this like villains convention and the guy i know the guy turns into a giant cockroach that he's trying to get. and Anyway, it's a whole thing. There's just too too many too many different weird villains. and Anyway, it's a thing. But there it is, Despicable Me 4, from Illumination, who is starting to eat Pixar's lunch. ah You know, Gru Jr. Gru Jr. is in here now, and yeah, there's the kids, and I don't know, it's, there it is. There it is. um Maxine, continuing, ah he is it T West or Thai West? Thai, all right.
01:33:29
Speaker
hi Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. i yeah yeah yeah ah these That whole little series that he's doing includes, I think, ah X and Pearl. Yeah, with Mia Gough. With Mia Who I really adore, Mia Gough. The thing I love about these movies, I'm not a particular fan of of ah of this sort of horror, but what I love that he does is that he makes these films look like that they were made during the period. yeah it there this is that And this is 1980s Hollywood, you know, the kind of ah
01:34:06
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, exactly. mean he's porn seen And now she's going to go to Hollywood and she's going to do that. I guess it's about the whole period. ah Paul Thomas Anderson movie of Boogie Nights. This will be during that Boogie Nights period, during the Hollywood land murders period. And so he sets it in in in in Hollywood during that period. And I do like that. it's yeah yeah He's very aware ah and he and he makes them look like they are No, that's that's true. I get that. And he's made some some lower budget horror films, which I really, really did enjoy. I mean, he's a he is a very talented filmmaker. So, yeah, I mean, I don't particularly get this particular one, but I do like the people in it. I like Mia Goth. I like Bobby Cannavale, obviously. Kevin Bacon has a really weird performance in this thing. He comes out of the blue. But yeah, you're right. It's ah it's a great recreation of the period. And you know why the hell not? It's 4K, a Ty West film on 4K. That tells you where we're going, folks. ah Tom Hanks in Captain Phillips. This is part of the 100 Years of Columbia Pictures celebration of ah releases. And it is a ah steel book.
01:35:12
Speaker
And it's very nice, comes with a Movies Anywhere code, so you can add it to your digital locker library. Of course, based on the true story of, it's funny, he played Captain Phillips and he played the airline pilot, Tully. And it, like, if you're, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully,
01:35:36
Speaker
hi tom hanks he plays them all So this is a true story of that ship captain whose cap whose ah ship was hijacked by Somali pirates at one point. And ah Paul Greengrass does a great job with it, really kind of you know nails the recreation in that gritty way that he did with the United 93.
01:35:56
Speaker
And this, of course, includes a wonderful, wonderful performance from the non-professional actor at the time, Barkhad Abdi, who just kind of fell into this part. And man, he is just terrific. And I just love his performance. I love it.
01:36:13
Speaker
I was super-duper concerned at that time because you know he was nominated yeah and and got all of that sort of ah attention. I was super-duper concerned it was going to be one of those moments of where you know we we we we do that and then yeah and then he never works again. Because he is a good actor. That's a performance in that movie. He's not that guy.
01:36:34
Speaker
and he he he he he he He creates a character and performs it um ah in the same way Tom Hanks did. And it's it's a wonderful situation because, in fact, he works all the time um and has been working ever since. I mean, and he's been in big movies. He was in yeah a Blade Runner 2049. He was in yeah yeah all kinds lots of lots of television shows. And and in in and again, always being good because he's a good actor. I'm just really going to give him a lot of credit too, because I remember on ah at the time with the Academy Awards and and I, you know, the other example we can think of is Dr. Hangus Nor with the killing fields, right? You know, Dr. Hangus Nor, who was a doctor, a legit doctor, a lot of people thought like, oh, and I was going to go back to being a doctor. No, he said, I'm going to just keep acting.
01:37:18
Speaker
and And yeah, they don't get more Oscar nominations per se, but Barkout Abdi has become a working actor. And I remember seeing an interview with him on one of those red carpets in awards season and where people were kind of you know er it kind of condescendingly saying to him, well, you know you're you're this guy from Somalia who's not really a professional actor. So what are you going to do now?
01:37:39
Speaker
You're going to go back to Somalia and like take the money and, you know, open up a shopper. You know, the assumption was he would just go home and kind of ride his celebrity here. And he said, no, I'm moving here. I'm moving here. I got myself a place here in L.A. and I got an agent and I'm going to be an actor now. Like he he legit decided I am going to stay here and I'm going to I'm going to play this moment out.
01:38:04
Speaker
And it takes ah it takes some guts and some presence to to say that, to realize, no, I got a moment. I'm going to exploit it. And he did. And he has. Yeah, and and and and has. And is so again, just look them up. Works all the time. And and you've been watching them and hearing them and all kinds of things a great story for years. now We got Focus with Will Smith and Margot Robbie, a movie which, if you talk to people who are Will Smith and Margot Robbie fans, they will usually say, I'm sorry, what?
01:38:32
Speaker
uh this movie just came and went but for some reason it is now on 4k uh i yeah you know i mean it's uh it's it's kind of a quasi no noir right i mean margo robbie's a con artist and Oh, it's a, it's a, yeah it's a perfectly serviceable, uh, and, uh, it's a good, it's it is a good question. I don't know that they have particular chemistry, you know, chemistry matters. He has more chemistry with Martin Lawrence. Uh,
01:39:05
Speaker
than he does with Margot Robbie. And sometimes it just happens, man. One with Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum a couple of months ago, this romantic comedy thing. And watching that movie, it was as if they literally didn't like each other. Yeah. Like actually, not, you're like actually didn't like each other. So maybe it might have something to do with that. Also, you know, I hate these two director things, Glenn, Fakara and John Rockwell, you know, I hate these two director things. You know, why do you need two directors? You know, what are you directing? You know, what are you, the Coen brothers? Speaking of that, if I could draw a parallel to another two director movie,
01:39:46
Speaker
directed by John Francis Daly and ah Jonathan Goldstein, which stars Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams in Game Night. And when you talk to people who are fans of Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams and you mention Game Night, they say, I'm sorry, what? yeah So it's the same thing, and right? This is almost the exact same problem. I mean, it's very strange.
01:40:11
Speaker
it's Yeah, what is this movie? What is this movie? I mean, this is not a noir. Obviously, they're they're trying to... there it the The idea is that there's people who just have a regular weekly game night and then it kind of turns into a murder mystery and things get out of hand. But, ah you know, I don't know why anybody would go to see this movie. I mean, other than the stars, it's just a very strange...
01:40:33
Speaker
Strange time when these movies were made. ah Speaking of, I remember very, very well when Richard Pryor, live on the Sunset Strip, was released in theaters and, um you know, stand-up comedians did not release concert films of their performances. and and Like, why would someone buy a ticket to that as a feature film? And boy, did this reveal how far stand-up comedy had come out of the the little, you know, cigar smoky back alleys and those little nightclubs and the Catskills and the inner city ah ah black clubs and, you know, suddenly here you've got a comedian who has done some stuff on television and who has made some movies but says, no, you know what, I'm going to make my stand up the movie and people went and paid.
01:41:25
Speaker
yeah Yeah, yeah, including me in 1982. I can remember taking Bridget to go see this movie and then he'd do and he'd do a few more. yeah Paul Mooney, the great Paul Mooney, one of Richard's writers and writers of this show and and many other things and ah and it's just an absolutely hysterical And you know, it's a big multi camera thing. yeah You know, I mean, there had been there had been there had been been been been comedians who might have been television or something like that. Then did they take that and break it out from whatever it was. But no, this was a full on. Yeah, it was as if you were there.
01:42:01
Speaker
And I had never been to the Sunset Strip yet, so it was a big deal to me. um ah And and and you know in St. Louis watching this movie, feeling like I was going to see a Richard. Because other than that, the way you would engage a comedian prior to this that's right is you would buy their album.
01:42:18
Speaker
So, so, so, so, yeah, I'd see Richard in a movie. Richard would be on a talk show, you know, ah and and do a few jokes before he wouldn't sat down with Johnny or whoever it might be. But if you really wanted to engage an actor, if Richard didn't come to your town and if you want an adult who could go buy a ticket, you didn't, you just didn't see these people.
01:42:38
Speaker
uh... until richard started making movies uh... of his content and and and i don't mean it without without richard breaking this down we would have had no we have there'd be no eddie murphy concert films there would be no dave chappelle on netflix every every few months with uh... you know these these massive but these massively successful uh... concerts so i mean he really broke a lot of barriers and uh... richard prior 4k live on the sunset strip pretty fantastic Also in 4K, Can't Hardly Wait, ah which I found to be kind of, this is odd. Why would we put Can't Hardly Wait on 4K? But then, you know what? A lot of people kind of came of A's in the, I just saw another movie in Lauren Ambrose the other day. Seth Green, Peter Faccinelli, Jennifer Love Hewitt. I mean, this kind of broke a lot of talent. So this has a following. I guess there are collectors out there of a certain age who, this was the first film that Deborah Kaplan and Harry L. Font did together. Again, talking about two directors.
01:43:37
Speaker
yeah have another most those two directs yeah i remember doing the jackckets for this movie and and yo know, it was interesting. i think the biggest name ah face known into t was probably Seth Green at the time because he had been in that Woody Allen movie winning a old kid. Uh, and everybody el were just these actors. ah but you know it was a sweet little movie, kind of romantic yeah again, ah time capse ah just a time capsule, working actors are Freddy Rodriguez and Sean Patrick Thomas, and you know, all these kids. We also have the Watchers. ah M. Night Shyamalan produced, well, let let me let me back off on this a little bit. the M. Night Shyamalan produced this, and it was written and directed by Eshana Night Shyamalan.
01:44:33
Speaker
So the yes, so there's there's a there's some yeah It freaks me out that his daughter is old enough to be making movies that her dad's throwing her at this point ah But but clearly this is that you know, look we we Cronenberg's kid is doing movies David Lynch and David Lynch's kids have all made movies. So I mean it's in keeping with yeah anyway ah so this ah this takes place in Ireland where ah in ah In this very isolated bunker, there is a ah young woman and some other people who are ah are trapped by creatures. and okay So it's a very Shyamalan family kind of scenario. And where does it go? And does it pay off ultimately?
01:45:24
Speaker
um i Yeah, what's going on? What's going on? What's going on? You know, once the payoff comes, there's really no reason to ever watch the movie again, which is sort of the problem with his movies, too. they're all They're all overblown Twilight Zones. I will say this, even though I feel his influence on this, it's sort of the same way that I feel with with Jennifer Lynch's stuff, right? um I feel like, well, I get, and I see dad's influence,
01:45:49
Speaker
Whether that's you know genetic or environmental, I don't know. But I also see some talent of your own. So I'll i'll um i'll throw you a bone on that one. and Yeah. ah Look, um the apples here have not fallen far from the tree. That's a fact. They have fallen off the tree. um ah they there's there's there's the there's this there's There's a bit of style here. um But what's funny, though, is that that she she she makes the mistakes.
01:46:19
Speaker
to my mind, ah that her dad makes, and that she she tends to show us the monster. And I got to tell you, ah nine times out of 10, you want to do a Spielberg and not show us the monster. ah Nine times out of 10, every blue moon, you you might have a monster that's, wow, that's a cool monster, the alien. ah But nine times out of 10, don't show me your goofy monster. I don't want to see it. ah You're just going to disappoint me. ah Wind River with Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen.
01:47:00
Speaker
and this is right in the pocket of that thing so they made a nice new ah steel book of wind river in ultra h d so you can go pick that up and we also have a went to the uh went to the uh went to the uh did you yeah went to the premiere of this right Taylor Taylor was this 2017 Taylor's there and uh after the premiere on you know i'm i'm im I'm getting up I'm leaving it and Taylor walks over to me he says I can't believe Spike Lee came to see my movie And I said, Spike, Spike Lee did not come to see your movie. I don't know. I don't know how he took that. ah what with you And I just left all but i yeah you so um too much to you. It really does. No, it was funny. It was why I thought it was this. I just to go home thinking that Spike Lee flew in from New York.
01:47:54
Speaker
to see Taylor Sheridan's Wind River. Oh, that's too funny. pull yourself And we also have the Strangers with Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman, 4K Ultra HD. This is from 2007. Can't believe it's been that long. um You know, this is also, um it's ah it's it's frankly a little bit like the Watchers. ah Kind of sort of the same conceit a little bit. ah You know, it's late at night. and um live Tyler and Scott Speedman find themselves suddenly terrorized by these these masked invaders and home invaders. And, you know, what do you do? A little bit like Jodie Foster's, what was the Fincher film? Panic Room, Panic Room. A little bit of that going on too. A little bit of the Desperate Hours remake with Mickey Rourke, right? There's a little bit of that.
01:48:51
Speaker
All of that stuff. ah This kind of blew me away, and I'm thrilled that it's out, even though I hated this movie when it was first released. And somehow, I've kind of come around on it in a weird, campy way. Brian De Palma's Body Double, out in a 4K steel book. I remember thinking, gosh, this is just the stupidest, worst remake of, ah of of like, Psycho crossed with the Rear Window I have ever seen. But somehow,
01:49:18
Speaker
yeah Well, DiPama and Hitchcock, because, you know, you're watching DiPama, you're watching Hitchcock. But somehow, you know, I watch it now and there's like a weird nostalgia. Even that dumb Frankie goes to Hollywood kind of quasi porn shooting sequence. I'm like, all right, this has kind of a thing going. Like, I get it. But man, I hated this movie at the time. I hated it. I've come around.
01:49:40
Speaker
yeah i yeah It was way too salacious for me then. Now I watch it and I see all that style, which of course was just the style of the time. I mean, but now, you know, 40 years on, you know, all those primary colors and all that platinum hair and Melanie Griffith and that little black eye-waisted thing with the thigh-high. I'm like, oh, wow. You know, like that was stuff. That was stuff. All the shoulder pads at the time. So I love the style of it. But like I say, if you're watching De Palma, you're watching Modernized. Very true. Very, very true. And then we also have Knuckles from the world of Sonic the Hedgehog. We actually have four Blu-rays of this to give away. And I'm talking about the 4K right now, but they gave us Blu-rays to give away.
01:50:32
Speaker
If you're interested in Knuckles, go ahead, send us an email, gods at digigods.com or gods at cinegods.com with Knuckles. In the subject line, make sure you spell it with a K. It is K-N-U-C-K-L-E-S. Don't give me any weird spelling with like an N or G or D-N. Don't do that. Just put Knuckles in the subject line and make sure it gets to us by the 20th of October and I'll make sure that within 24 hours you are alerted as the winner of a happy Blu-ray of Knuckles. it do what What do I have to say about Knuckles? Well, that's why I talked about the giveaway before talking about it because I just don't. i look
01:51:10
Speaker
if If you're going to make a Sonic the Hedgehog or any kind of a spin-off of Sonic the Hedgehog, make it all CG, this interaction with with people. It's like the same problem in the Garfield movies, which, you know, right? It's just, like why? Why do that? What what are you doing? um It's way too juvenile for me, but maybe, you know, maybe there's a maybe there's something dead inside me. I don't know.
01:51:39
Speaker
And then lastly on the 4K front, a couple from Blue Underground. ah Both of them ah definitely B-movies. ah The first one is one that i I have a weird affection for. It is called High Crime by Enzo Castellari. And I have a soft spot for this because it stars Franco Narrow.
01:52:04
Speaker
And, you know, ah from Django forward, when Narrow makes exploitation exploitation films, he really, really, he he goes all in on them. And, you know, this is this is just one of those Italian movies of a certain moment in 1973 when they were just sort of all, if they weren't spaghetti westerns, they were spaggeheti they were still spaghetti westerns.
01:52:29
Speaker
And so this is a crime film done like a spaghetti western. ah It's got Fernando Ray and James Whittemore and, you know, a few others in it. It's cheesy, but somehow it's kind of also both strangely enjoyable and it has never been released before in any form here.
01:52:48
Speaker
And it's got Franco Narrow, for crying out loud. Franco Narrow. So yeah give high crime a look. It's on 4K. I mean, Blue Underground saw fit to release this in all of its 1970s garish glory in 4K. So it's it's worth it's worth a look.
01:53:03
Speaker
And then, lastly, is ah kind of in the same general vein. This is from 1967, so this is even earlier, is the, yeah, right, is the Million Eyes of Sumaru.
01:53:18
Speaker
The extended version with Shirley Eaton and Frankie Avalon also features Klaus Kinski, believe it or not. um What an odd movie this is. Wilfred Hyde White shows up in this thing, too. Wilfred Hyde White from My Fair Lady. ah Yeah, this is this is ah directed by Lindsay Chantef.
01:53:38
Speaker
never heard of. And this is from the original uncut camera negative. They found it. They found it. It was long thought lost. They recovered this negative recently. This has never been seen before. And they have put this thing out and restored it and put it out on 4K. There's a second disc here, a Blu-ray disc that has, you know, additional audio commentaries on it and all kinds of other fun extras and whatnot. You know, the regular 4k disc only has two audio commentaries this has the commentaries along with featurettes and trailer and other fun stuff but uh you know this is sort of a sort of a it's a it's secret agent stuff man it's a it's a it's a one of the original kind of uh post bond bond spin-offs like you know the our man flint
01:54:31
Speaker
and all of those things. But i mean flint yeah all yeah yeah yeah hell it's like that, but it came before them. It is much cheaper. I will say Frankie Avalon mut not you know doesn't really lock it down, but it's got a lot of beautiful women. It's got you know some really great locations, some fun camera work. And this movie has never been seen before. So you know there you go. ah The Million Eyes of Sumaru extended version. If that is your genre and that is your era,
01:55:00
Speaker
knock yourselves out and have some fun with it. Yeah. it is It is good. I've always wanted to to to kind of do a longer article on and all all those movies, that particular genre, but you know never had the chance. um In the little bit of time that we have left, let's let's just not before I dive into all the Asian stuff, let's just do a few docs and some other some other ah new films and other worthwhile films to check it out. you know the um ah let me hear Let me see here. There's a couple of docs. Oh.
01:55:33
Speaker
I wanted us to talk about in a couple of weeks ago, notably meeting the Beatles in India. ah This is really this is really quite fun. This is from ah Obstructed View and Sunrise Films Limited. It's on Blu-ray. And, ah you know, everyone kind of knows the Beatles had a thing with, you know, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and that they kind of had a moment in in India. But nobody's ever really put all of that together. This is a 79 minute doc.
01:56:03
Speaker
ah narrated by Morgan Freeman and ah made by Paul Saltzman, which ah who who really, I mean, made just a few years ago in 2020, but who really kind of puts all that stuff together in a way that is more than just a chronicle of archival material.
01:56:20
Speaker
its ah it It really kind of makes some points and it tries to sort of understand this moment when transcendal transcendental meditation was a thing in the world and the Beatles kind of got in on it and and what this meant in and not just in the lives of the Beatles but beyond the Beatles. So it really contextualizes it in a very interesting way. Yeah.
01:56:41
Speaker
Well, it was certainly another one of those moments in the cultures. This is 1968. So I was a little kid, so seven years old, something like that. ah And so all of this sort of like came to me a wee bit later. And I remember, I remember sort of looking up the Maharishi Mahesh yoga and and sort of like, so because, you know, that guy, we came to the States and and hung around and did some stuff and, you know. Yeah, yeah yeah I know.
01:57:04
Speaker
yeah those got those guys were interesting guys and and a few of them or ones like them were popular or notable in the culture for some time to come. Not all from India, some from Korea, South Korea. oh i moon and all those people some reverend moon um yeah yeah moon Yeah, yeah, yeah. and they would just do they and And it was just up yeah for a moment. that It was a thing. um and And it kind of begins ah yeah with the Beatles going to India. And and then we also have Patricio Guzman's of The Battle of Chile with the bonus film the first year. ah you know this is a the The history of Chile, the 1973 military coup and
01:57:48
Speaker
all everything that goes around that that particular moment. ah this is a yeah This is really quite a chronicle. All about Allende, the coup d'etat, and this film was was lauded around the world, but it got released basically because Chris Marker got behind it. In any case, The Battle of Chile is really a great historical film. um It was ah yeah along with the ah the first year, the extra here,
01:58:16
Speaker
um It is a perfect historical chronicle that if you really want to have on your shelf the ah the full history of this stuff, you you simply must have this. um
01:58:27
Speaker
It's like three parts, right? 75, 73, 79, 75, 79. And then Giuseppe Tornatore, who made Cinémeparadiso, also did a wonderful documentary tribute to Enyo Morricone, and that is out on DVD. It is called Enyo, and it is lovely, and it is fitting, and it is almost too short. And that is saying something, because it's two and a half hours long.
01:58:52
Speaker
But you want it to keep going because you just want to know more about this man and you want to continue to absorb his wonderful music. And ah it really is is just a lovely, lovely film. I wish it were on Blu-ray or even 4K with the sounds. You really, you know, this the music comes more alive. But I will. as as ah Has there been a and narrative film about Indians? No, no, no. Even a tell, you know. I'm sure they i'm sure one day one year there probably will be, but you know.
01:59:19
Speaker
And then and then my my favorite person ever to walk the earth in all of history, ah William Shatner is is the star of you can you You Can Call Me Bill, which is ah it really just... you know shatner is such an amazing figure and it's it's funny all the movies that he shows up in before star trek and before twilight zone if you if you're really paying attention you're like oh my gosh shatner did a lot of see really worked it uh... so yeah this is uh... this is looking at his you know i mean the guys in his nineties and he's still completely lucid he looks like he could be sixty-five it's unbelievable che he just went into orbit man he just went into space
02:00:00
Speaker
yeah Yeah, it's funny because to today on the radio show, we we we or yesterday, we taped the radio show there. We were talking about directors specifically in their 80s, 90s, and beyond still doing good work. we We could have easily mentioned, ah bill I don't know if he directs a whole lot more than he used to, and we could have easily mentioned them. I don't think we mentioned ah Bill Shatner. Well, Bill is just absolutely amazing and ah this just this is a really fun journey through his life and and especially to have him there to guide you through it. it is It's a trip, it's a blast. And then lastly on the dock front, ah Fiddler's Journey to the Big Screen, which we want to make a big shout out for. This is the doc the definitive documentary on the making of Fiddler on the Roof.
02:00:46
Speaker
ah which is which we should point out was produced by our very dear friend Sasha Berman, um someone we have worked with as a publicist for many, many years. This was a passion of hers. Sasha is a wonderful, wonderful, hard-working publicist and filmmaker, and she this was her labor of love. She wrestled this thing to existence, and it is a wonderful documentary.
02:01:10
Speaker
They were able to get Norman Jewison on the record before he died. so you know And they have a lot of archival footage of um of ah those who are no longer with us from this, like Topol. Topol died many, many years ago, but they got they have archival interviews to sort of stay there for him. So um it's great. It's great. talk to our friend Kenny Turan, who's also interviewed in here, but it is, you know, and Kenny Turan is an interesting person to interview because he grew up speaking Yiddish, right? Like Kenny, like Kenny comes from ah a certain Jewish um ah community in America, which was crucial to being able to sort of bring this to the screen. And he talks about, you know, how legit like Topol, not really the kind of person that, you know, like he's very Israeli, not Yiddish, right? You know,
02:01:56
Speaker
You get some of those distinctions. It's fascinating to hear. But anyway, Fiddler's Journey to the Big Screen, the definitive making-up documentary about Fiddler on the Roof. I love this. It is absolutely terrific. And ah so for our dear friend, Sasha Berman, who who brought this all the way to life and narrated by Jeff Goldblum. um Yeah, bravo. Absolutely bravo.
02:02:17
Speaker
ah Just a few final things here, I wanted to make mention of ah some some Warner Archive titles, or I will let Tim go. um Some wonderful old movies here from Warner Archive, Northwest Passage with Spencer Tracy, beautiful and technicolor. Three Little Words, Fred Astaire and Red Skelton.
02:02:38
Speaker
along with Vera Allen and Arlene Dahl. Absolutely terrific musical. ah Even better musical. Words and music with ah with, I mean, so many people in this thing. This is this is one of those, ah you know, ah it it was basically a Rodgers and Hart biopic. It's ah the story of Rodgers and Hart as ah as ah a songwriting and and musical team. They packed everybody into this. Judy Garland, Lena Horne, Gene Kelly, Mickey Rooney.
02:03:06
Speaker
June Allison, they all showed up. They all showed up. Oh, it's... Oh, Perry Como or... It's ridiculous. It's just a lot of fun. It's ridiculous. and And then lastly, Tim, remain you and I love this. ah Black Belt Jones ah from Warner Archive Collection, finally on Blu-ray. Jim Kelly stepping out of the shadow of Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon, and he gets his own vehicle, and what a vehicle it is.
02:03:35
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, Gloria Henry and and and Scatman Crothers was sort of, Gloria had went on, she would have ah she would have a couple of a couple of turns herself. ah Jim, an actual martial artist who was really, really, really good ah and and had a presence that's fro and the presence that was really, really, lot of again, a lot of really great.
02:03:58
Speaker
the old school names that we would need, Eric Laudeville and all these people in this movie. Yeah, man, Black Belt Jones. Not for nothing. yeah You and I have often thought that Black Belt Jones yeah should be reconceived, not not unlike um yeah yeah that show that Queen Latifah is in the equalizer or whatever like that. ah it it ah Black Belt Jones, man, of course there should be a Black Belt Jones television series. It makes a ton of sense. It just makes a ton of sense.
02:04:24
Speaker
And, you know, I mean, it was the same team who all do is, you know, Fred Weintraub, whose son Zach is a good friend of ours and Paul Heller, they produced this and Robert Klaus directed at the same team that made Enter the Dragon. So they didn't they didn't cut Jim Kelly loose. They they rallied around him and said, oh, you know, we wed like what you did. Let's let's we're going to pull you out and we're going to put you in your own film. and And he nailed it. Black Belt Jones is a great movie. It's a terrific movie.
02:04:48
Speaker
Yeah, all right. Well, that's it Tim. We're gonna we're gonna be back ah before thanks before Thanksgiving before it shows yeah shows you how late at night it is Yeah, yeah we're gonna be back before Halloween yeah yeah The the American French Film Festival formerly Kolkawa is is gonna be going that same week So I've got an event to moderate there and and another film week coming up I don't know when are you want film week again, not till in November probably right?
02:05:15
Speaker
Not until November, I got like a couple of things done. I'm doing this new thing with ah A-thing. Nice. ah With Rotten Tomatoes, fedango over their Fandango there, Fandango. Yeah. You've seen them before, those little video movies, things that pop up. I'm doing a couple of those. I did one for for ah the Halloween movies coming up. and I'm going to knock another one out for, um ah well, yeah a sort of bio a piece on Ridley Scott.
02:05:40
Speaker
for for gladiator coming up so so yeah people can keep keep a look out of that watch your rut and tomatoes all right and you know so send us ah those those ah those ah giveaway requests to gods at didjagods dot com gods atingods dot com buy the twentieth again for Knuckles and ah Reacher season two and for Star Trek Discovery the final season we're giving all those away so you know just send me Discovery Reacher and Knuckles in the subject line by the 20th and within 24 hours you will be alerted if you're a winner and until the Halloween show hope everybody has a great time we'll see you then
02:06:23
Speaker
Quick segment here on some great Asian films. I am, of course, a huge aficionado of films from the Asian continent. It is ah one of my particular passions. So without further ado, Eureka, a UK company, releases a lot of great classic and ah fairly recent Asian titles.
02:06:42
Speaker
Love to give you a recommendation to watch the Shaolin Plot Limited Edition 1977 film that Sammo Hung made as an action director before graduating to directing. This was, of course, a great action director and director and actor. um One of the childhood three brothers of Jackie Chan.
02:06:58
Speaker
along with Yun Bu, and um it's it's ah it's a terrific film. It's a really, really fun 1977 martial arts film in the Shaolin vein after the Shaw Brothers era, but before the the Golden Harvest era really, really kind of pops, and certainly before the Hong Kong New Wave.
02:07:18
Speaker
ah We also have wo Wolves, Pigs, and Men, um which is ah a Kinji Fukusaku Yakuza film. Kinji Fukusaku made lots of bloody Yakuza movies, lots of fun. ah This is one of them. I don't know if it really transcends any of the others, but it's ah it is a lot of fun. It's part of their Masters of Cinema series. And ah there aren't probably aren't very many left. It was a limited run. So ah you know Wolves, Pigs, and Men, great Yakuza film from Kinji Fukusaku.
02:07:49
Speaker
um A man called Tiger stars Jimmy Wang Yu, who of course is the star of Master the Flying Guillotine, which I've done a couple of audio commentaries for, and ah you know famous for playing one-armed heroes, one-armed swordsman, one-armed boxer. um He's not one-armed here, but he is behind he is ah being directed by Lo Wei, who did a a couple of Bruce Lee movies right at the front of Bruce Lee's career, The Big Boss and Fist of Fury.
02:08:14
Speaker
So, ah this has a lot of this is a you know really solid pedigree. Jimmy Wang Yu was sort of the pre Bruce Lee star, the post Shaw Brothers star that held the ah the Hong Kong industry together. And a man called Tiger, so it's you know not his best, but it's solid.
02:08:32
Speaker
ah the ah The champions, this is a, ah they were there they're billing this as a predecessor to Shaolin Soccer. i I think that's ah an interesting little bit of a stretch, but it does have the other um of the three brothers, Yun Bu, not Jackie Chan, not Sammo, but Yun Bu. He is in this made in 1983. And, you know, it's,
02:09:01
Speaker
i I suppose it it's in the theme, it is it's still you know it is football themed, it is ah kind of dealing in the same general vein as Shaolin Soccer, but I think it's ah it's a more enjoyable shall and soccer more enjoyable film than Shaolin Soccer.
02:09:18
Speaker
anyway it has um It's got some interesting featurettes, on a lot of fun featurettes, including ah one that looks at the 1987 Hong Kong celebrity football and soccer team that had you know a lot of people on it, including Jackie Chan. So that's kind of a fun little extra. But otherwise, you know it's ah it's just a silly Hong Kong comedy.
02:09:40
Speaker
the The Valiant ones, in really quite an amazing movie, ah this is the ah this was directed by King Hu, the great Taiwanese filmmaker known primarily for his ah his period martial arts films. and is' sort of the the he Basically, the he did for martial arts films what John Ford did for the Westerns. King Hu, absolute legend.
02:10:02
Speaker
And um this is not quite in the same vein as a Dragon Inn or a touch of Zen, which are sort of his ah considered his masterpieces. But it is ah it it definitely is ah head and shoulders above ah most of them. It was shot back to back with the fate of Lee Khan, but eventually released later. And it is a Wuxia film. um you know it's It's period within the same period. And um it's ah it is it's if you like his other films, you will certainly like this one.
02:10:33
Speaker
The Valiant Red Peony includes the first three films in a series that is incredibly popular with fans of the Yakuza genre and ah never before released here to my knowledge, certainly going to be ah a wonderful revelation for people who love Yakuza films.
02:10:55
Speaker
ah considered very, very influential, released in the late 60s, early 70s, and ah kind of centers around the a woman in this case, who is the daughter of a gambler, ah who is out for revenge after her father is murdered, and it is ah is it it gets very, very bloody by the end. It is considered kind of an inspiration to Kill Bill in many, many respects.
02:11:20
Speaker
ah We also have the wonderful Cynthia Rothrock in China O'Brien, one and two. Cynthia Rothrock, one of the few whoever was able to really ah make a ah career out ah a martial arts career outside the United States. And ah she absolutely did that. China O'Brien, not you know her her greatest moment, but I am a Cynthia Rothrock fan. So being able to watch that in 4K.
02:11:47
Speaker
is going to be something special for a lot of people. Cynthia Rothrock, not a lot of 4K out there. Bodyguard Kiba 1 and 2 from Eureka. This is a Sunny Chiba Saga. A lot of Sunny Chiba Sagas out there, and this is a good solid one. Bone crushing violence here. he He's you know a bodyguard in this case. it's a little i mean you know The bodyguards always have beautiful women to to guard, whether it's it's the Jet Li bodyguard or the ah the American bodyguard with the Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner, kind of in the same general vein, um but, you know, except with Sonny Chiba and a lot more action, a lot, a lot more bloody action. ah So it's it's fun to have, a you know, Bodyguard Kiba out there. Bodyguard Kiba one and two, both films.
02:12:41
Speaker
A lot of Jet Li here. We have Jet Li in Black Mask, which is one of my favorite. I think it has one of the greatest riffs ever, the musical riff in Black Mask. The little guitar riff is really, really fun. ah This was produced by Choi Haak, and he plays a superhero. He's a masked superhero known as Black Mask, and it's got ah an elevator scene that is just beautifully, beautifully choreographed. It's really, really terrific.
02:13:04
Speaker
ah You know, a lot of people have said, well, it looks a little bit like he's playing Kato from The Green Hornet. Yeah, maybe. ah But wonderful Yunwu Ping choreography here, beautifully directed. i Black Mask, a lot of fun, classic Hong Kong new wave movie. um Really, really worth checking out if you're a Jet Li fan.
02:13:25
Speaker
And if you're a Jet Li fan, you want to check out Heroes and Villains, which includes three of his classics altogether. It includes ah The Enforcer, and Dr. Y and the Scripture with No Words, and Hitman. I think all three of them are great. I think Hitman is probably the best of them, though the Indiana Jones-ish Dr. Y and the Scriptures with No Words is ah you know is kind of a fun thing because it's, ah it's you know, it's inside that it's it's a novelist writing a story but you there's a story within the story and the story outside the story a little bit like the yeah the never ending story and i think all but all three of these films are fun and they they all come together so it's a it's a three for but hit man really is is pretty great.
02:14:10
Speaker
ah Casino Raiders, ah you know, um it's a it's a kind of a classic Hong Kong crime thriller, not necessarily one that I ever loved, but Andy Lau is a big, huge, huge ah star now. And it was co-directed by Jimmy Hung and Wong Jing. Anybody who knows me knows I i come and go with Wong Jing. He's sort of a madman. Sometimes his movies hit, sometimes they don't. I always enjoy Andy Lau.
02:14:38
Speaker
But it is very, very Wang Jing. That means it's frenetic and sometimes weird and crazy. Yakuza Wolf 1 and 2, a couple of great Yakuza thrillers starring Sunny Chiba. That's all I need to tell you they you know if you. If you know these films, you know they're great. um They're kind of classic Yakuza revenge films done in a period Western style. So there's a little bit of a spagheti spaghetti Western vibe to them as well.
02:15:06
Speaker
More Hideo Gosho movies, Samurai Wolf 1 and 2. Hideo Gosho, great director in the genre as well. This is from the Masters of Cinema series. And um you know it's it's sort of ah doing a little bit of the same thing that the Yakuza Wolf 1 and 2 did. So those sort of go together. The Fall of Akko Castle.
02:15:31
Speaker
is the ah the story of the 47 Ronin, which has been told many, many times. and ah But this time it's directed by Kinji Fukusaku, the great Yakuza film director. And so it has his vibe on it. And again, it stars Toshiro Mafune and Sunny Chiba together.
02:15:53
Speaker
again for the last time. Fascinating pairing and it works. It absolutely works. So that's ah that's that's ah ah an unusual take on a familiar tale from some very, very talented people. And then, of course, we have the the Royal Tramp Collection, which you sort of can't get enough of. These are classic Stephen Chow comedies directed by Wong Jing. Stephen Chow is out of his mind. Wong Jing is out of his mind. So you you you get maybe a little bit of overload of Hong Kong crazy here. but But this is one of those ah times where I kind of feel like everything really does come together. The Royal Tramp films are an awful lot of fun. Got some ah DVDs here also, mostly from um the from film movement, but from some others as well, which run the gamut of movies ah from various Asian film industries. But are they're all really worth checking out. They've all sort of had festival exposure and ah some wonderful movies here to talk about.
02:16:52
Speaker
Youth Spring by Wang Bing is a documentary about, it's not about sewing machines, but it's sort of about sewing machines. It's about what sewing machines and people in the in the garment industry represent in this particular town that is sort of on the distant outskirts of Shanghai, where they make ah children's clothing. And ah it's ah it took five years to make this film.
02:17:19
Speaker
like And it really, yeah it kind of immerses you in an aspect of industrial ah Chinese culture that is very, very not exposed to the West. It's really, really worth checking out. It's ah it's ah a kind of a follow up to a previous film by Wang Bing, but you don't have to have seen the previous film. You really, ah you should check out Youth Spring, if you especially if you want to learn more about what's happening in China and Chinese culture.
02:17:47
Speaker
Japanese director Yujiro Harumoto made a balance. ah And this is um this is a very, very tough film to watch. um this is a The center's on a journalist.
02:18:08
Speaker
who is trying to who's trying to better understand a a schoolgirl's suicide. And ah she's trying to sort of put the pieces together and ah and do her work and do the interviews and do the investigation. And um where this leads her, where this investigation leads her is a very, very disturbing and dark exploration, but it's one that I think just about every society on Earth will relate to and understand on some level. So it's a very universal uni.
02:18:45
Speaker
spelled Y-U-N-I, um had wonderful exposure both in Toronto and at the Palm Springs Film Festival. This was submitted as Indonesia's official Oscar entry in 2022. Was not selected, but that doesn't mean that it's not really, really powerful. ah We don't often think of Indonesia as a place for drama. Indonesia has made a lot of great martial arts films.
02:19:07
Speaker
But they have an industry, a very, very capable industry, and ah this ah this is a this is quite a fascinating dissection of what's going on in Indonesia, which is considered a very conservative culture.
02:19:20
Speaker
when um A high school student played by this actress named Arawinda Kirana, who's wonderful, is ah sort of trying to figure out, um you know, what she wants to do with her life. She's rejected a proposal for marriage and ah she's not quite sure where she fits in this very, very conservative society. And it is ah ah it's it's it's tough and it's very telling.
02:19:52
Speaker
um Are You Lonesome Tonight it was also got some great festival exposure, in this case at Cannes and at Toronto. And this is kind of a kind of a very yeah tough punk themed quasi crime neo noir drama made by a filmmaker by the name of Wen Shipei.
02:20:17
Speaker
This is a Chinese ah Mandarin language and ah it it it starts with a guy who ah basically commits a hit and run and a devastating hit and run and then um the the the what then it goes sideways and becomes a ah ah very different kind of of crime. And that's where it really gets very, very interesting. ah That's the noir part of it, but there's ah there are more. There are some great twists and turns. It also has a bonus short film on it by Huenshi Pei called Killing Time, which is also a very, very good film. ah Seven Days in Heaven.
02:21:02
Speaker
kind of a beautiful, sweet, poetic, unusual film, also Chinese language film. Wang Yu Lin and Essay Liu directed this together. ah One of those unusual moments where you have ah have a directing team doesn't often happen in in China or frankly in any Asian industry for that matter.
02:21:21
Speaker
um Yeah, and this this is ah one of those Chinese films that goes into places you don't typically expect them to go. it um it is a ah I believe this is actually Taiwanese, which would sort of explain a lot, but in any case, it is Chinese language.
02:21:39
Speaker
and um it it It deals with the with you know family trauma, with family relationships. ah it is ah It is presumably autobiographical on the part of one of the directors and it it gets into you know mourning and grief and how families cope and in it in the ways that make the distinguish um Chinese culture very much from from any other in the world.
02:22:10
Speaker
and where they and where they have things in common, certainly. ah Let's see here. ah We also have Before, Then, and Now. This is an Indonesian film that is also very, very different in ah even from any others that we've... I mean, this this this is...
02:22:35
Speaker
This takes ah a much more traditional angle on Indonesian life. This this comes at it from a, ah it's a little bit more of a melodrama, I guess is a way of putting it. um It deals with a woman who is ah kind of this beleaguered wife of a very wealthy man who owns a plantation. She's kind of very sheltered and um There's something wrong in her life. she You're not quite certain where all a lot of her her sort of ah vulnerability comes from. And ah there is a backstory to to her experience that goes all the way back to to the period of the Indonesian Revolution. And if you don't know about the Indonesian Revolution, you will get an education in it very, very quickly here.
02:23:24
Speaker
ah But anyway, it it it then gets into female relationships and um it gets it becomes quite ah quite a tearjerker by the end. It's it's it's a pretty powerful film ah before, now, and then. Some wonderful twists and turns in there.
02:23:43
Speaker
July Rhapsody is a wonderful movie from the Hong Kong director, Ann Hoy. This was Anita Moy's last performance, the wonderful Anita Moy. If you're a fan of the Hong Kong New Wave and you love Anita Moy, boy, this this really, this will just get to you. the Anita Moy, especially if you know you love some of her pulpier stuff like the heroic trio, this is a much more dramatic turn. And it'll it'll really, it'll tear your heart out just knowing that she should still be with us.
02:24:12
Speaker
Huge huge loss but and hoy is one of the one of the great melodromatists of the hong kong new wave maybe the only melodromatist who is still working and ah she does ah it's just a wonderful wonderful family drama here in july rhapsody my favorite is still summer snow but you know that's a this is a good one as well.
02:24:35
Speaker
And then we also have White Building. This ah also has some international festival exposure. This is from Kim Stim, and it is ah basically a Cambodian film. It's ah it's a co-production with a number of different countries in it, Cambodia, France, China, and Qatar. But it is a Cambodian film, and it looks at, first time director actually here, Kavich Niyang. So ah finally somebody, ah other than Riti Pan able to make movies in Cambodia in this case. But no, it's it's ah it's wonderful, it takes place in Phnom Penh, and it's all ah it's ah it's all about modern Cambodia and ah the ways in which it it reflects
02:25:21
Speaker
the the hopes and dreams of people in the West and the way that it's becoming Westernized and yet kind of turning that, taking that Westernization and giving it a Cambodian flavor, um family struggles, rebellious kids, dreams of becoming Cambodia's next superstar, their equivalent of ah ah winning in America's Got Talent or the or any of our televised singing competitions. and The singing competitions have become epidemic around the world. And it's, ah you know, this is a really coming of age of a very, very talented young filmmaker. And ah also from Kim Stym is ah the
02:26:06
Speaker
surprisingly unusual and compelling film, ah Stonewalling, which was co-directed by Huang Ji and Ryuji Otsuka,
02:26:18
Speaker
neither of whom I was particularly familiar with, but um really a very, again, another movie that deals very much with the the way that Western behaviors have impacted Asian cultures and the ways in which they are coping with what this introduces into their lives. And in this case, you're centering on this young woman who um is trying to find a ah place for herself, ah trying to find a you know way to flight attendant school and other ways to sort of improve herself and find her career. And it's
02:26:54
Speaker
you know so It's about her struggles, much in the same respect that families struggle about the same things in the United States and in England and in South America and everywhere else. ah you know It's one of many movies that is looking at modern China and sort of trying to figure out what is really going on there. And when will they figure it out? And I think we all hope that it happens sooner rather than later.
02:27:22
Speaker
ah The wonderful Kora Edo Hirokazu, otherwise known just as Kora Eda, who was Oscar-nominated for Shoplifters, ah made a more recent film called Broker, which is a gorgeous movie. It ah it stars Song Kang Ho, most popular for starring in Parasite. And ah this is Japanese-Chinese, or sorry, Japanese-Korean co-production. And ah just a just really beautiful story about people who you know can't necessarily have children of their own, um trying to deal with the options that are available to them and ah the surprising ways in which families wind up being forged as a result.
02:28:06
Speaker
ah We've also got some great films from the ah Hong Kong New Wave period that I find ah wonderful, but I don't know that others will necessarily find them wonderful. I will recommend them only if you are a fan of the Hong Kong New Wave and want to see films that have kind of a a historical relevance to them. These are from the 88 Films Library and the Fortune Star ah catalog. The first is the Blue Gene Monster, kind of a cheesy Frankenstein story, but it has Amy Yip in it, who is a category three star from the 1990s. Not anything salacious. We just love Amy Yip because she made Sex and Zen and Robotrix and Erotic Ghost Story, and this is an early performance of hers from that period.
02:28:52
Speaker
Also, if you're a fan of the sort of the original ah Hong Kong feminist action ah saga, the inspect the original The Inspector Wears Skirts, co-starring Cynthia Rothrock, Sybil Hu, Sandra N.G., a lot of other wonderful actresses, this is the one that sort of started it all. there Michelle Yeoh is not in it, but she might as well be, and it's pretty terrific.
02:29:19
Speaker
And then we lastly have Long Arm of the Law, parts one and two, which is a saga made in 1984 and 1987. It predates infernal affairs, but it's sort of paving the way for it at the same time, courtesy of director Johnny Mack and stars like ah Alex Mann and Lam Wai. It's good, solid Hong Kong action and crime filmmaking from the period.
02:29:48
Speaker
Uh, from Korea, we also have, uh, the Roundup, No Way Out with Don Lee. These films are great. You don't have to have seen any one Roundup film before you've seen the others. They're all sort of in the same vein. Uh, Don Lee plays, uh, Detective Masuk-do. And he's just a big hulking guy with a granite face and he, you you throw a punch out if it doesn't faze him, he throws a punch at you, it'll knock you 30 feet. And it's just fun watching him be that guy, this this ah implacable detective who is just gonna take down the criminals no matter what he does. He's a little bit like a big hulking Korean dirty Harry, but these movies are absolutely terrific. ah Definitely worth checking out. The Roundup, No Way Out with Don Lee, who is one of the most enjoyable stars in the world.
02:30:37
Speaker
to watch. He really is. He's an awful lot of fun. um And then we have a bunch of stuff from Wellgo that I'm going to get to here in a moment. But first, let me make mention of a couple of other films on Blu-ray. One is Raisuke Hamaguchi's Passion, which was the deb his debut film. This is the guy who directed Drive My Car, got a whole bunch of Oscar nominations.
02:31:04
Speaker
ah recently, but Passion was his first film, and it is a very accomplished story about a couple who are engaged until something happens that seems to jeopardize the engagement. um A very accomplished film, beautifully directed visually and in terms of the performances, and ah you know worth the worth a watch for sure, as is Shadow Magic, which is a wonderful Chinese film from ah the 1990s.
02:31:33
Speaker
and that tells a period story around the turn of the century, starring Jared Harris as a Westerner who brings movies and cinema and projection and the magic of moving pictures to a Chinese village. And it's just, it's not quite Chinema Paradiso set in the Chinese town, but it's awfully close. And it is it is one of my favorite films, one of my favorite Chinese films from the period. And then ah Lastly, a whole bunch of great well-go titles, starting with ah Born to Fly, which is a little bit of ah of an attempt at making a ah ah Chinese version of Top Gun. It doesn't quite get there, but it has you know it has its moments. it's ah it's it's It's sufficiently fun to watch.
02:32:24
Speaker
And then we have Tak Sagaguchi in 1% Warrior, which is really, ah it's kind of a standard Yakuza action film. ah Modern Yakuza, you know, Assassin's and and Revenge film. It sort of hits all the familiar beats, but it's interesting because it does have Tak's co-star in it, Ishitogo, who is an expert in Jeet Kune Do, which is of course the martial art that,
02:32:53
Speaker
Bruce Lee was famous for inventing. Donnie Yen continues to have an amazing late life ah resurgence in his career. He just keeps on ticking along even as Jet Li has retired and Jackie Chan, his other His other colleague from the New Wave period is winding down. This is not even a martial arts film. This is just ah an action rescue film with Donnie Yen in the snow, dodging avalanche and everything else, um and pulling it off. it's ah really It's really quite great trying to rescue a kid. Horror film called The Ghost Station.
02:33:32
Speaker
ah This is a ah South Korean film. um very yeah Very quasi-zombie. It's zombie adjacent. Let's call it zombie adjacent. Zombie adjacent crime film. Zombie adjacent ghost film.
02:33:49
Speaker
um Yeah, ah thin in terms of story, but very well executed in terms of the visuals. The Child, C-H-I-L-D-E, E at the end of Child, another South Korean film, written the directed park park written and directed by Park Hyun Jung, also a very, very talented filmmaker. This is kind of a fugitive style story about a yeah about a, about a guy who's, you know, trying to save his, trying to save his mom and pay for her surgery. So he goes looking for his estranged father to see if he can, you know, the guy's supposed to be loaded. So see if he can get some money to save his mom turns into a very far reaching journey and takes him into, into some, you know, he winds up getting involved with some bad people in some very interesting and ultimately challenging ways that of course resolves a little bit like the fugitive.
02:34:47
Speaker
um Very interesting science fiction here, the film from Chinese director Front Blow. It's called The Wandering Earth and it's in keeping with a lot of recent science fiction like The Three Body Problem on on Netflix. It's very apocalyptic but also philosophical. The sun is going to go out and Somehow we ah we have to help so humanity survive, and this is the story of those who undertake this unlikely ah experiment to save the Earth. I don't know if it fully works, but it's interesting.
02:35:24
Speaker
And then lastly, ah Dr. Chian and the Lost Talisman, which is kind of a mystical, magical, Indiana Jones-ish adventure centering around ah a guy who's kind of a fraud. He's ah he's like a phony exorcist, but he winds up being drawn into some very, very real supernatural events and a pretty cool adventure that winds up being done in a lot of fun directions that it takes you. So that that is Dr. Chun and the Lost Talisman. So all of that brings the segment to a close. Hope everybody is having a great time. Go out and familiarize yourself with all of the great cinema of the world.
02:36:09
Speaker
from Asia, from Africa, from South America, the Middle East, to Europe and elsewhere. um There are great movies everywhere and more opportunities to see all of it now than ever before. So with that, have a great week.